Iran’s UN envoy on Thursday accused Israel of abusing a Saudi-sponsored UN interfaith conference for political purposes and suggested the state had no right to take part.
Speaking on the second day of the meeting, which earlier heard US President George W. Bush call for worldwide religious freedom, Iranian Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee did not name Israel, but left no doubt what he had in mind.
“The representative of a regime [whose] short history is marked with ... aggression, occupation, assassination, state terrorism and torture against the Palestinian people, under the pretext of a false interpretation of a divine religion, has tried to abuse this meeting for its narrow political purposes,” he said.
Khazaee was referring to Israeli President Shimon Peres, who took the rare opportunity of being in the same room as Saudi King Abdullah on Wednesday to praise a Saudi peace initiative that he said brought hope to the Middle East.
“The participation of such a regime not only has no benefit to our common purpose, but, as proved in this very meeting, will give them a chance to try to disrupt the current process to divert our attention from our mandate” to improve dialogue between different religions, Khazaee said.
Khazaee’s speech stood out at the two-day meeting of the UN General Assembly, convened at the request of the Saudi monarch, not only because of its accusatory language, but because it failed to praise Abdullah.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal reacted coolly to Peres’ remarks.
“The disappointing side of President Peres’ comment is that he chose parts of the Arab peace plan and left other parts untouched,” he told reporters.
In related news, Israeli aircraft fired missiles at a target in the northern Gaza Strip yesterday and Palestinian militants sent a rocket barrage flying into Israel as a five-month truce continued to unravel.
Israel’s military said the airstrike targeted rocket launchers, and a Hamas radio station reported that two militants from the Islamic Jihad organization were wounded.
Gaza militants unleashed a barrage of rockets at the southern Israeli town of Sderot, and Israeli rescue services said they were treating one person wounded by shrapnel.
Hamas claimed responsibility for firing the rockets in an announcement posted on one of the group’s Web sites.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS