A speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the first day of the United Nations’ Durban Review Conference in Geneva has brought widespread condemnation from Western leaders.
The Iranian president used the platform to attack both Israel and America, accusing the Israeli government of being “racist” among other charges.
The speech itself was interrupted first by three people dressed in clown’s wigs and red noses, who were marched out by security men.
But when Ahmadinejad moved into criticism of Israel and America, dozens of Western diplomats got up and marched out of the conference hall in protest. Later, as he tried to enter a press conference after the speech, the Iranian leader was met by dozens of demonstrators shouting “Shame! Shame! Shame!”
Foreign secretary David Miliband said in a statement: “President Ahmadinejad's remarks earlier today, describing Israel as a ‘racist government’ established on the ‘pretext’ of Jewish suffering, were offensive, inflammatory and utterly unacceptable. That such remarks were made using the platform of the UN's anti-racism conference is all the more reprehensible.
“The UK delegation, along with many others, rightly walked out of President Ahmadinejad's speech because such hate-filled rhetoric is an intolerable abuse of free speech and of the conference.
“Our engagement in the UN conference has always been on the basis that will not accept attempts to prejudice the conference conclusions - for example removing references to Holocaust remembrance or the fight against anti-Semitism. And we will not accept an event that degenerates into racism and intimidation. But nor should we leave the international stage only to those, like President Ahmadinejad, who would take global efforts against racism backwards.”
UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon met President Ahmadinejad prior to his speech to discuss the issues facing the conference and that the international community should come together to fight racism.
Afterwards Mr Moon also issued a statement but in almost the opposite tone, condemning President Ahmadinejhad’s effective hijacking of the UN’s platform.
Mr Moon said: “I deplore the use of this platform by the Iranian President to accuse, divide and even incite. This is the opposite of what this conference seeks to achieve. This makes it significantly more difficult to build constructive solutions to the very real problem of racism.
“It is deeply regrettable that my plea to look to the future of unity was not heeded by the Iranian President. At my earlier meeting with him, I stressed the importance of the conference to galvanize the will of the international community toward the common cause of fight against racism.
“I further stressed the need to look to the future, not to the past of divisiveness. In this regard, I reminded the President that the UN General Assembly had adopted the resolutions to revoke the equation of Zionism with racism and to reaffirm the historical facts of the Holocaust respectively.
“We must all turn away from such a message in both form and substance. We must join hands and work together to achieve a constructive, substantive agenda to combat racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.”
The conference, called to review a similar event held in Durban, South Africa in 2001, has already been boycotted by Israel, America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, while Germany reduced its participation to observer status.