Iranian nuclear is greatest threat to world: Israel’s PM

Posted by ThunderBolt on September 24th, 2009 No Comments Printer-Friendly

UNITED NATIONS — Israel’s prime minister told the United Nations on Thursday that Iran’s alleged quest for nuclear weapons is the greatest danger the world faces.

“The greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage between religious fundamentalism and the weapons of mass destruction,” Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech to the UN General Assembly in New York.

“The most urgent challenge facing this body today is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons,” he said, speaking on a day when the UN Security Council held a summit on nuclear proliferation.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds up a 1942 document from a meeting of Nazi officials discussing plans for the extermination of Jews, as he addresses the 64th United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York September 24, 2009. (Reuters)

Israel regards Iran, which has repeatedly threatened to destroy the Jewish state, as its arch-enemy.

Earlier Thursday, Iran denied comments from France and Britain suggesting Teheran was pursing atomic weapons as “totally untrue and without any foundation.” Iran says it only has a peaceful civilian nuclear program to produce energy.

Netanyahu also addressed Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians, saying again that he would accept a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside Israel. However, he offered no further olive branches to the Palestinians and did not refer to calls by the Palestinians and the US to freeze Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem.

A lone Palestinian delegate walked out as Netanyahu defended Israel’s December-January assault on the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. Netanyahu devoted much of his speech to Iran and its President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who he did not name, instead referring to him as “this man.”

Netanyahu assailed the UN for allowing Ahmadinejad to address the Assembly on Wednesday as a “disgrace,” just days after the Iranian leader again denied that the Holocaust took place.

“A mere six decades after the Holocaust you give legitimacy to a man who denies the murder of six million Jews,” Netanyahu said, brandishing the blueprints of the Nazi death camp, Auschwitz. “What a disgrace.” (AFP)