Iran accuses Israel of abusing U.N. interfaith meeting

Reuters

Published: November 13, 2008

By Patrick Worsnip
Iran's U.N. envoy on Thursday accused Israel of abusing a Saudi-sponsored U.N. interfaith conference for political purposes and suggested the Jewish state had no right to take part.
Speaking on the second day of the meeting, which earlier heard U.S. President George W. Bush call for worldwide religious freedom, Iran's U.N. Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee did not name Israel but left no doubt what country he had in mind.
"The representative of a regime (whose) short history is marked with ... aggression, occupation, assassination, state terrorism, and torture against the Palestinian people, under the pretext of a false interpretation of a divine religion, has tried to abuse this meeting for its narrow political purposes," he said.
Khazaee was referring to Israeli President Shimon Peres, who took the rare opportunity of being in the same room as Saudi King Abdullah on Wednesday to praise a Saudi peace initiative that he said had brought hope to the Middle East.

"The participation of such a regime not only has no benefit to our common purpose, but, as proved in this very meeting, will give them a chance to try to disrupt the current process divert our attention from our mandate" to improve dialogue between different religions, Khazaee said.  more ; also 

Saudi Arabia Sponsors UN Inter-faith Conference

INTERFAITH – CONFERENCE – UN 

Washington, 12 November (IranVNC)—World leaders today gathered at the United Nations in New York City to launch a two-day interfaith conference sponsored by Saudi Arabia. 

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hailed the Saudi initiative as “truly inspiring”, and said that countries should work to ensure that “our rich cultural diversity makes us more secure – not less.”

US President George W. Bush is also listed to address the conference. Spokesperson Dana Perino said that Bush “believes that the king of Saudi Arabia has recognized that they have a long way to go and that he is trying to take some steps to get there.”

Rights groups have criticized the conference sponsored by Saudi Arabia, an officially Sunni-Muslim state that prohibits public worship by those who do not practice the state’s Wahhabi Islam. 

“Dialogue is no substitute for compliance with universal human rights standards,” wrote the US Commission on International Religious Freedom in an op-ed published in the Christian Science Monitor today.

In his address to the145-member assembly, Israel’s President Shimon Peres praised a Saudi peace plan for the Middle East as a “serious opening for real progress,” the Jewish Telegraph Agency reports.

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