Top UN official criticizes US for propaganda against Iran president

New York, March 18, IRNA

The UN General Assembly president bitterly criticized the United
States on Tuesday for propaganda campaign against Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"I don't think anyone can doubt that in our part of the world,
concretely here ... Ahmadinejad has been demonized," Miguel D'Escoto
Brockmann told a news conference.

D'Escoto insisted he wasn't being divisive or promoting his own agenda
? but was just fulfilling his duty as president of the 192-member
General Assembly to uphold the U.N. Charter and promote peace and
nonviolence.

Briefing reporters on his visit to Iran, d'Escoto said he was struck
by the great support and respect for Iran from its neighbors at a
summit meeting of the Economic Cooperation Organization, a regional
body for developing trade among the neighboring states.

"I don't think anyone can doubt that in our part of the world ...
(President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad has been demonized," he said.

"The United States has been in the business of the demonization of
people forever and the canonization of the worst of dictators."

D'Escoto singled out Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, Nicaragua's
Anastasio Samoza and Chile's Augusto Pinochet."

He criticized the United States on Tuesday for acting on its own
rather than multilaterally as the U.N. Charter calls for, and singled
out former President George W. Bush for going to war in Iraq in 2003
without Security Council approval and for then accusing the Sudanese
government of committing genocide in Darfur.

"The United States dares to stick its tongue out to the Security
Council and says you either give me the green light to commit the
aggression that I want to commit, or I shall declare you obsolete,
irrelevant," d'Escoto said.


D'Escoto called the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant for
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against
humanity "unfortunate" and "lamentable" because the African Union and
the Arab League had asked the Security Council to delay the warrant
for a year to pursue peace efforts in Darfur.

"It helps to deepen the perception that international justice is
racist because this is the third time that you have something from the
ICC, and for the third time it has to do with Africa," d'Escoto said.

End