The Outgoing US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton is backing a call for the president of Iran to be charged with inciting genocide because of his speeches advocating the destruction of the state of Israel.
Bolton will appear today among a panel of diplomats and lawyers calling for the prosecution of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The panel has been convened by a Jewish umbrella group in the US, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations.
Bolton was forced to quit his post after his appointment was blocked by Democrats and several Republicans in the Senate foreign relations committee.
PHOTO: EPA
The call for legal action came as the Iranian president repeated his onslaught against Israel at an international gathering of Holocaust deniers in Tehran. The president, who has dismissed the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis as a "myth" told up to 70 visiting speakers that the Israeli state would soon be wiped out.
"Thanks to people's wishes and God's will, the trend for the existence of the Zionist regime is downwards and this is what God has promised and what all nations want," he said.
"The Zionist regime will disappear soon, the same way the Soviet Union disappeared," Ahmadinejad said, according to ISNA, a government-financed news agency. Thus, "humanity will achieve freedom."
He was praised by several participants for his "bravery and democratic actions" according to a source who was present.
The event came under fierce attack abroad. British Prime Minister Tony Blair condemned the conference as "shocking beyond belief" and singled out the decision to invite David Duke, a former leading Ku Klux Klan member, as proof of Iran's extremism.
Meeting Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, in Berlin, German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, said Germany rejected the conference and would "act against it with all the means that we have."
Franco Frattini, the EU's justice commissioner, denounced it as "an affront to the whole democratic world."
Duke praised the event as "a tremendous step forward" and said Ahmadinejad said "sensible things".
Bolton will be joined in today's launch of the legal action against Ahmadinejad by Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz, and former Israeli ambassador to the UN, Dore Gold, together with experts from the US, Canada and Israel.
A suit will be lodged with the international court of justice at The Hague, which will decide whether to hear the action.
The panel said the Iranian president was guilty of inciting genocide "by making numerous threats against the United States, calling for the destruction of Israel and instigating discrimination against Christians and Jews."
His words violate a 1948 UN genocide convention, to which Iran is a signatory, they said.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
China has built a land-based prototype nuclear reactor for a large surface warship, in the clearest sign yet Beijing is advancing toward producing the nation’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, according to a new analysis of satellite imagery and Chinese government documents provided to The Associated Press. There have long been rumors that China is planning to build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, but the research by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California is the first to confirm it is working on a nuclear-powered propulsion system for a carrier-sized surface warship. Why is China’s pursuit of nuclear-powered carriers significant? China’s navy is already
‘SIGNS OF ESCALATION’: Russian forces have been aiming to capture Ukraine’s eastern Donbas province and have been capturing new villages as they move toward Pokrovsk Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi on Saturday said that Ukraine faced increasing difficulties in its fight against Moscow’s invasion as Russian forces advance and North Korean troops prepare to join the Kremlin’s campaign. Syrskyi, relating comments he made to a top US general, said outnumbered Ukrainian forces faced Russian attacks in key sectors of the more than two-and-a-half-year-old war with Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a nightly address said that Ukraine’s military command was focused on defending around the town of Kurakhove — a target of Russia’s advances along with Pokrovsk, a logistical hub to the north. He decried strikes
RSS