Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said US President George W. Bush's outline for Middle East peace represented "unimaginable iniquity and injustice" toward the Palestinian people.
Khamenei was commenting on President Bush's Monday speech promising support for the creation of a Palestinian state in exchange for the Palestinians dumping their leader, Yasser Arafat.
In that speech, Khamenei said, the Palestinian people were "stripped of all their basic rights and labeled as terrorists," while the Israeli government, "which has recourse to all the means of force and repression, was presented as a victim.
"That is an unimaginable iniquity and injustice," he said in remarks to top-level judicial officials quoted by state radio.
"Perhaps you can fool international public opinion with this kind of propaganda for awhile, but not for long," Khamenei added. "The recent popular protests across the world, even in the United States, are manifest proof of that."
In the meantime, Iranian radio said that Tehran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharazi, and his Syrian counterpart, Faruq al-Shareh, had upbraided Bush for misreading the realities of Middle Eastern affairs and for reflecting the wishes of Israel.
The two, speaking on the sidelines of the Organization of the Islamic Conference meeting of foreign ministers in Khartoum, also called for vigilance in defending the rights of the Palestinian people, the radio said. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
