Ramos Horta Calls Ahmadinejad Comments Obscene

United Nations (News Today) - East Timor’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning president on Saturday denounced as an “obscenity” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s suggestion that the U.S. government was behind the Sept. 11 attacks. It was the strongest criticism so far at the current U.N.

General Assembly session of Ahmadinejad’s assertion at the assembly on Thursday that most people believed Washington was responsible for the attacks by hijacked planes that felled New York’s World Trade Center and hit the Pentagon outside Washington.



Describing the Iranian president’s comments as his “latest intellectual concoctions,” Jose Ramos-Horta said, “What President Ahmadinejad said in this forum in regard to the
terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center was an obscenity.”

“He went too far as he has done many times before in this assembly and in other fora as when he questioned the facts of the Holocaust,” Ramos-Horta said. Attacks on other leaders by name are uncommon at the United Nations, although British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg spoke of Ahmadinejad’s “bizarre, offensive and attention- grabbing pronouncements.” Outside the assembly, U.S. President Barack Obama called the comments hateful and inexcusable.

In a wide-ranging speech, Ramos-Horta also called on Obama to release five Cuban intelligence agents jailed in the United States since 1998 and to lift the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba. The agents were given long sentences for links to the 1996 downing by Cuban military jets of two small planes flown by members of the Florida-based Brothers to the Rescue group, which opposes Cuba’s communist rulers.

“It seems that for some in the U.S., and in particular in the state of Florida, the Cold War is not over,” Ramos-Horta said. Florida is home to many Cuban exiles. On the Middle East, Ramos-Horta called the Gaza-based Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah militant groups “genuine popular movements” and said labeling them as terrorists was “not sound policy.”

However, he also called on Hamas to recognize Israel. He also termed Afghanistan’s Taliban “a popular movement.” Tiny and impoverished East Timor has a population of about 1 million. Long a Portuguese colony, it was occupied by Indonesia in 1975 but became independent in 2002. Ramos-Horta was a joint winner in 1996 of the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts on behalf of his country’s people.

Ramos-Horta also stepped into local politics by praising New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “intellectual clarity and moral courage” in defending the right of U.S. Muslims to build an Islamic center near the former Word Trade Center site. He also expressed sympathy with New Yorkers for inconveniences caused by security precautions for the 140 presidents and prime ministers attending the General Assembly.

Source : kompas

Posted in: