WESTERN DIPLOMATS WALKOUT OVER AHMADINEJAB SPEECH

US diplomats and other Western delegations have walked out of a United Nations summit as the Iranian president said some believe the 9/11 attacks on the US was the work of Americans to save Israel.
Two US officials led the walkout as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the General Assembly in New York on Thursday. They were quickly followed by the British and other Western delegations.

• Ahmadinejad said there was a theory that "some segments within the US government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime.
• "The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree with this view," he said.
• PJ Crowley, the US assistant secretary of state, told Al Jazeera the statement was "totally outrageous".
• "[Those killed in the attacks] were people of all faiths, all nationalities. They were killed by 19 people, a plot perpetrated by al-Qaeda," he said.
• "We know who did it and they have admitted who did it. This idea that nine years later there is still some debate about who did it and why is outrageous."
• Lawrence Cannon, Canada's foreign minister, called Ahmadinejad's comments "unacceptable" and "a blatant violation of international standards and of the very spirit of the UN".
• About 3,000 people died when hijackers crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and a fourth aircraft plummeted into a Pennsylvania field in 2001.

Source: Al Jazeera..read more