[Jerusalem Post Front Page] Following Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's address at the United Nations anti-racism conference in Geneva, during which he called for the eradication of Israel, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon released on Monday a statement slamming Ahmadinejad's cynical manipulation of the conference. "I deplore the use of this platform by the Iranian president to accuse, divide and even incite. This is the opposite of what this Conference seeks to achieve. This makes it significantly more difficult to build constructive solutions to the very real problem of racism," the statement read.
"It is deeply regrettable that my plea to look to the future of unity was not heeded by the Iranian president. At my earlier meeting with him, I stressed the importance of the Conference to galvanize the will of the international community toward the common cause of the fight against racism," it continued.
Ban Ki-moon also noted that he "reminded the President that the UN General Assembly had adopted the resolutions to revoke the equation of Zionism with racism and to reaffirm the historical facts of the Holocaust respectively."
"We must all turn away from such a message in both form and substance," he said.
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband also commented on the speech in a statement, calling the remarks on Israel "offensive, inflammatory and utterly unacceptable."
"That such remarks were made using the platform of the UN's anti-racism conference is all the more reprehensible," continued Miliband.
"The UK delegation, along with many others, rightly walked out of President Ahmedinejad's speech because such hate-filled rhetoric is an intolerable abuse of free speech and of the conference," he said.
Miliband also used the platform to justify the presence of his country's delegation at the conference, saying that while "we will not accept an event that degenerates into racism and intimidation," there is danger in leaving "the international stage only to those, like President Ahmedinejad, who would take global efforts against racism backwards."