Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Wednesday attributed the collapse of the Camp David peace summit to a failure of US policy in the Middle East, state television reported.
"The failure of Camp David is not a simple event, it is the failure of American policy in the Middle East," Khamenei said in a speech to students in the northwest Iranian town of Meshkin-Shahr, where he has been since Monday.
The Americans "kept (Palestinian President Yasser) Arafat for 15 days in the hope of getting something out of him and to get a second wind," Khamenei said.
Earlier Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi expressed satisfaction over the breakdown of the summit, saying the Palestinians should "take a lesson" from that and "revise their attitude and their approach vis-a-vis the Zionist regime."
Kharazi, quoted on the radio, said the political climate had changed in the region and that the "Zionist regime should know that it cannot impose its views on the Muslim peoples."
Iran's press also welcomed the failure of the summit, echoing Iranian President Mohammad Khatami's affirmation that Jerusalem is an inalienable part of Islamic-Arab territory and must be governed by the Palestinians.
On Saturday, Khamenei, also lashed out at the summit, saying any Palestinian compromise with Israel would fail because of resistance by radical Palestinian groups.
Iran, which supports radical Palestinian movements, is strongly critical of the 1993 Oslo interim peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians -- TEHRAN (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
