Ban condemns Iran's Israel threats, Holocaust denial
Without naming Iran, United Nations Secretary-General Ban
Ki-Moon denounced his hosts in Tehran on Thursday for threatening to destroy
Israel and for denying the Holocaust.
"I strongly reject threats by any member state to
destroy another, or outrageous attempts to deny historical facts such as the
Holocaust," Ban said in his speech to a Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit
in the Iranian capital.
"Claiming that Israel does not have the right to
exist or describing it in racist terms is not only wrong but undermines the
very principle we all have pledged to uphold," he added.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly
denied the Holocaust and this month described Israel as a "cancerous
tumor." In 2005 he caused uproar by being quoted as saying that Israel
should be "wiped off the map."
Persian language scholars say a more correct translation
of his comment would read: "Israel must vanish from the page of
time."
Ban was attending the NAM summit despite calls from the
United States and Israel that he should boycott the event.
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