Obama pledges to confront Holocaust deniers
Iran warned U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon against "double standards" on Thursday after he deplored anti-Israeli comments by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a United Nations conference on racism this week.
In a letter to Ban, Iran’s Ambassador to the U.N., Mohammad Khazaee, denounced the furious reactions to Ahmadinejad’s speech at a time when, he said, U.N. officials were silent on Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
On Monday, the Iranian president, who has questioned the Nazi Holocaust, condemned Israel at a U.N. conference in Geneva on racism as a "totally racist government" founded "on the pretext of Jewish sufferings."
In an unusual criticism of a head of state, Ban deplored Ahmadinejad’s use of the conference platform "to accuse, divide and even incite."
Khazaee implied the comment contravened the need for a U.N. chief to be "impartial and fair."
"Utmost vigilance should be exercised in order to prevent any situation where the United Nations and its distinguished officials would be seen as applying selective approaches, practicing double-standards or taking biased positions," he said.
"All these incomprehensible reactions have been made against the statement of (Ahmadinejad) while the United Nations and its officials have remained silent on (the) Israeli regime’s abhorrent crimes against the innocent Palestinians and on the threats, allegations and distortions made against… Iran by the Israeli regime," Khazaee added.
The Iranian envoy was referring to Israeli statements that Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran says is peaceful, threatens the Jewish state’s existence and to speculation in Israel about a possible strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Khazaee also condemned a walkout by European Union delegates to the Geneva conference during Ahmadinejad’s speech, calling it a "manifestation of intolerance" in disregard of U.N. principles of freedom of expression.
Ahmadinejad, the Iranian letter said, had been "subjected to unfair and unwarranted harsh criticism only for having tried to pronounce the positions of the country that he represents."
Taking on Holocaust deniers
Meanwhile President Barack Obama pledged Thursday at a ceremony remembering the millions of Jews who were slaughtered in World War II to confront "those who tell lies about history" and deny the Holocaust.
"There are those who insist the Holocaust never happened, who perpetrate every form of intolerance — racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism and more," Obama told a gathering in the Capitol Rotunda, including Jews who survived the World War II slaughter and non-Jews who sheltered them.
"We have an opportunity and an obligation to confront these scourges," said Obama.
"We have the opportunity… to commit ourselves to resisting injustice, intolerance and indifference in whatever forms they may take, whether confronting those who tells lies about history or doing everything we can to prevent and end atrocities like those that took place in Rwanda, those taking place in Darfur," said Obama, who spoke after Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.
Wiesel, who survived the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, where his mother and sister perished, took on the Iranian president.
The Iranian leader has become "the number one Holocaust denier in the world," said Wiesel.
"He used the solemn setting of a United Nations gathering again to insult the state of Israel in a way that no civilized person should ever do," the Nobel laureate said.
Israeli deputy prime minister Silvan Shalom said Tuesday in Poland, where the Nazis ran many of their death camps, that what Iran was trying to do "is not far away at all from what Hitler did to the Jewish people just 65 years ago."