Iran leader sparks walkout at UN over Israel
By FRANK JORDANS, Associated Press Writer
GENEVA – Dozens of Western diplomats walked out of a U.N. conference and a pair of rainbow-wigged protesters threw clown noses at Iran's president Monday when the hard-line leader called Israel the "most cruel and repressive racist regime."
The United States decried the remarks by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as hateful — reinjecting tension into a relationship that had been warming after President Barack Obama sought to engage Iran in talks on its nuclear program and other issues.
Ahmadinejad — the first government official to take the floor at the weeklong event in Geneva — delivered a rambling, half-hour speech that was by turns conciliatory and inflammatory. At one point he appealed for global unity in the fight against racism and then said the United States and Europe helped establish Israel after World War II at the expense of Palestinians.
"They resorted to military aggression to make an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering," he said.
Maybe it was a bad idea to ask a man who denies the Holocaust to speak at an anti-racism conference. It reminds me of the time I tried to put together a racial unity conference in the O-Town and goofed by inviting David Duke. Apparently he thought I meant racial purity. Eh, a good chuckle was had by all over that one.
In the future though I would advise protestors to skip the rainbow wig. We're trying to make genocidal maniacs look bad, not sane by comparison.
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