Saturday, September 27, 2008

Israel's Peres says Ahmadinejad 'taking world for a fool'

Israel's Peres says Ahmadinejad 'taking world for a fool' (NSI News Source Info) Jerusalem - September 28, 2008: Israeli President Shimon Peres sharpened his attack on Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday, accusing him of "taking the world for a fool" in his statements to the UN General Assembly. "(Ahmadinejad) has committed a fatal error, and is taking the world for a fool. He thinks he is an absolute prophet, proclaiming that there is no more hope for the United States or Israel," Peres told Israeli public radio. "It is shameful to Islam, to all religions, to the United States, and to democracy. His voice does not come from heaven but hell and one day it will pass away like a breeze," he said in the interview conducted in New York. Israel has long considered Iran its greatest threat, both because of Tehran's accelerating nuclear programme and repeated statements by its leaders predicting the demise of the Jewish state. In a blistering speech before the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, Peres said Iran was "at the centre of violence and fanaticism" and had "built a danger to the entire world." Israel and the United States accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons, while Tehran has insisted its programme is entirely peaceful and vowed to proceed despite three rounds of UN Security Council sanctions. Israel is the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear armed state with an estimated arsenal of 200 warheads. Neither the United States nor Israel has ruled out a military response to the Iranian nuclear standoff, and on Thursday Israel's Defence Minister Ehud Barak said all options remain on the table. "Iran continues to exert every effort in its activities to achieve a nuclear weapons capability," he said in a statement. "For now there is still time for addressing the issue diplomatically, but we believe we must not renounce any option and we do not think anyone else in the world should either," he added. In his own address to the assembly on Tuesday, Ahmadinejad lashed out at what he called international "bullying" and vowed to press ahead with Iran's nuclear drive. As for Israel, he said "the Zionist regime is on a definite slope to collapse and there is no way for it to get out of the cesspool created by itself and its supporters."

No comments: