Vatican officials object to Iranian president's remarks on Israel

[gilliam]

ROME (CNS) – Although members of a Vatican delegation objected to the Iranian president’s remarks about Israel at a U.N. conference on racism, delegation members did not think walking out was the right response, said a Vatican official. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the chief Vatican representative to U.N. agencies in Geneva, told Catholic News Service by telephone April 20 it was important for people not to be distracted by the remarks of the Iranian president, whose comments attacking Israel prompted a walkout by dozens of diplomats. The Vatican sent a delegation to the Geneva conference, which was convened to examine the statement adopted in 2001 at the U.N.'s first conference on racism held in Durban, South Africa. The conference, which opened in Geneva April 20, was being boycotted by the United States and several other Western countries because of fears that it would provide a platform to critics of Israel. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told participants that, after World War II, Israel had “resorted to military aggression to make an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering.” Western nations “sent migrants from Europe, the United States and other parts of the world in order to establish a totally racist government in the occupied Palestine,” he said.
georgiabulletin.org/world/2009/04/20/WORLD-1/