Sunday, February 8, 2009

IT'S AN HONOR TO SUPPORT HAMAS


Iran's parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani
Iran's parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani defended the Holocaust denial statements of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and stressed Teheran's support for Hamas at the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy on Friday.
Responding to Larijani's comments about the Shoah, Pierre Lellouche, a French legislator attending the conference, noted it was unlawful in France to deny the crimes of the Holocaust.
"In Iran, we don't have the same sensitivities," countered Larijani, who formerly served as Iran's chief nuclear negotiator.
Larijani's brother, Mohammad Javad Ardashir Larijani,
himself a former politician, denied the Holocaust at a transatlantic security conference organized by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Berlin last June.
The lack of an immediate public condemnation from the German Foreign Ministry last summer prompted outrage from Jewish organizations abroad and the Central Council of Jews in Germany.
In Munich, according to a Spiegel Online report, Ali Larijani slammed Israel and complained that the international community was applying "double standards" to Iran while countries such as Pakistan and India had tested atomic weapons without facing sanction.
The parliamentary speaker also sternly dismissed decades of US policies targeting Teheran and declared that the new American administration had to admit past wrongs before it could hope for reconciliation.
"The old carrot and stick policy must be discarded," he said, alluding to Western threats and offers of rewards to coax Iran to give up nuclear activities the West views as threatening. "This is a golden opportunity for the United States."
Larijani condemned Washington's backing for Iraq in its 1980s war against Iran and its support of Israel. Larijani said those policies and others in the region failed in their declared purpose of rooting out terrorism and finding hidden weapons of mass destruction.
Source: Spiegel Online

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