"German" Foreign Minister Steinmeier blasts Ahmadinejad's speech

[sullivan]

German FM: Ahmadinejad's UN speech 'blatant anti-Semitism'

Haaretz

Germany's foreign minister on Friday blasted the Iranian president's speech at the United Nations General Assembly as "blatant anti-Semitism" and urged the 192 U.N. member states to join in condemning it.

On Tuesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad railed against "Zionist murderers" and dwelled on what he described as Zionist control of international finance.

"The statements of the Iranian president about Israel are irresponsible and unacceptable," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told the General Assembly.

"The blatant anti-Semitism of his speech this year was intolerable and demands our mutual condemnation," he said.

The Iranian president has previously said that Israel should be wiped off the map.

President Shimon Peres said on Tuesday Ahmadinejad's comments echoed the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," an anti-Semitic tract from the early 1900s that purported to show a Jewish and Masonic plot to take over the world. It has since been exposed as a hoax.

After World War Two, Germany has made a point of condemning anti-Semitism because of its own Nazi past.

Earlier on Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a UN Security Council meeting on Israel and the Palestinians that the council should take up the issue of Ahmadinejad's comments about Israel.

Rice made the announcement at a Security Council discussion on Israel's expansion of settlements in the West Bank, called by the Arab League. Rice stressed that the Arab world has an obligation to advance peace in the Middle East.

"If the council feels it needs to meet again on threats to peace in the Middle East, it ought to focus on the Iranian president's remarks," she said, referring to the Arab League's repeated assertion that Israel's expansion of settlements in the West Bank was one of the main obstacles standing in the way of peace.

"The United States of America will be asking that the council convene again to take up the matter of one member of the United Nations calling for the destruction of another member of the United Nations in a way that simply should not be allowed," Rice said.

The secretary of state went on to say that at the top of the list of threats to international peace and security was Ahmadinejad's assertion that Israel "should be wiped from the face of the map, should be destroyed and should not exist."

"That should not be allowed," Rice said.

Ahmadinejad caused widespread outrage for saying in 2005 that the state of Israel should be wiped off the map.

Israeli envoy: Security Council's debates are irrelevant, pointless

Also present at the debate was Israel's ambassador to the UN, Gabriela Shalev, who said "The UN Security Council's debates are irrelevant and pointless."

Shalev said that the real issues were debated "just two floors below by President Shimon Peres and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas."

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told the same council meeting that "we will all have seen and must deplore the egregiously offensive comments of President Ahmadinejad."