New York: Representatives from the United States and other nations walked out of the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered a fiery speech that criticized the US, the UN and capitalism as a whole.
Incendiary statements from Ahmadinejad are nothing new for the assembled delegates. But his recounting of various conspiracy theories about the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US drove multiple representatives from the hall.
Ahmadinejad said, "Some segments within the US organisation orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order to save the Zioinist regime. The majority of the American people as well as most nations and politicians around the world agree with this view."
One by one, delegates from the US, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Australia and Spain rose and walked out as Ahmadinejad suggested that the US was involved in the attacks or allowed them to happen as an excuse to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Mark Kornblau, a spokesman for the US mission to the UN, said in a statement, "Rather than representing the aspirations and goodwill of the Iranian people, Ahmadinejad has yet again chosen to spout vile conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic slurs that are as abhorrent and delusional as they are predictable."
Ahmadinejad continued the attack on capitalism that he began on Monday, during an address at the Millennium Global Development Summit.
He linked the US-led conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan with wars for colonial expansion in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
The Iranian President touched on the recent controversy over a Florida pastor's plans to burn Quran. Ahmadinejad waved copies of a Bible and a Quran as he declared his respect and reverence for both.
He concluded his address with a defense of Iran's nuclear ambitions, discussing a recently submitted statement to the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Comments
0 comment