ISRAELI DELEGATION TO 'WALK OUT' UNGA DURING ROUHANI SPEECH

New York, 19 Dzulqa’dah 1434/25 September 2013 (MINA) – Based ordered from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli delegation attending the 68th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to walk out the meeting to boycott the speech that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani would give at the assembly, Tuesday.

Issuing a written statement, Israeli Prime Ministry announced that PM Netanyahu instructed the Israeli delegation to the UN to “act as they did last year and not be present during Iranian President’s remarks.”

“Despite the spin being given to the new Iranian President’s statements, the regime’s policies have not changed at all. Just last week, Rouhani, as Ahmadinejad before him, refused to recognize the Holocaust as a historical fact,” said Netanyahu, Anadolu Agency quoted by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA) as reporting.

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“When Iranian leaders stop denying the Holocaust of the Jewish people, and stop calling for the destruction of Israel and recognize its right to exist, then the Israeli delegation will listen to speeches at the General Assembly,” Netanyahu added.

Hassan Rouhani is the 7th and current President of Iran and also a Muslim cleric. In speech, Rouhani has offered to find a “framework” to manage differences with the US, Aljazeera reports.

Iran poses “absolutely no threat to the world,” Rouhani said at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday hours after the US President, Barack Obama, also expressed an interest in diplomacy to resolve a dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme.

Rouhani said he “listened carefully” to a speech earlier in the day by the US president. He said he was hopeful that the two sides could pursue diplomacy, but only if the US government speaks with “a consistent voice”.

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Rowhani, who swept to power in June on promises to ease tensions with the West and combat US-led sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy, said in his speech that his country posed no threat and was not pursuing nuclear weapons.

But he stood by Iran’s right to a civilian nuclear program and urged US President Barack Obama to ignore “war-mongering pressure groups” and make a deal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will address the UN General Assembly next week, has refused to rule out a military strike against Iran’s contested nuclear program.

“The greater the economic and military pressure on Iran, the greater the chances of diplomacy to succeed,” Steinitz said.

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“If this will be crystal clear to the Iranians that they have only one choice — between saving their economy and giving up the nuclear project, or saving the nuclear project and destroying their economy and maybe also suffering from a military atack — they might make the right decision,” he said.

Rowhani, in his speech, largely stayed away from the strident anti-Israel rhetoric of his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who triggered outrage by questioning the Holocaust.

Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has stated that his country has never denied the Holocaust. Rowhani, asked in a recent US television interview about Ahmadinejad’s comments, replied that he was not a historian. (T/P09/P04).

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)