At UN, Iranian President blames ‘corrupt powers’ for sparking global challenges

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today pointed the finger at “corrupt powers” for provoking or maintaining problems in global hotspots such as Iraq, the Middle East and Afghanistan, noting that the United Nations is often paralyzed and unable to take effective action.

In Iraq, “millions of people have been killed or displaced, and the occupiers, without a sense of shame, are still seeking to solidify their position in the political geography of the region and to dominate oil resources,” he told the General Assembly’s high-level debate.

“The UN is not capable enough to solve the problems and to remove aggressions, occupation and aggression.”

Regarding Palestine, the President said that “Zionists” and “some hegemonic and bullying powers [which] support them” are behind the decades of “carnage and invasion,” and the Security Council is powerless in assisting the Palestinian people.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the people are the “victims of the willingness of NATO member states to dominate the regions surrounding India, China and South Asia,” he said, again adding that the Council is toothless because some of the culprits are also “the major decision-makers” in the UN body.

Earlier this week, the head of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) called on Iran to be fully transparent regarding its nuclear programme.

At the body’s Board of Governors meeting in Geneva, Mohamed ElBaradei appealed to Iran to “implement all measures required to build confidence in the exclusive peaceful nature of its nuclear programme at the earliest possible date.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad today stressed that Iran, like all nations, has the right to produce nuclear fuel for non-military purposes, but “a few bullying powers have sought to put hurdles in the way of the peaceful nuclear activities of the Iranian nation by exerting political and economic pressures” against the country.

He accused these nations of themselves creating deadly nuclear weapons and stockpiling them, but noted that they are not under the watchful eye of international organizations.