LET’S MAKE PEACE, NOT WAR, IRANIAN KHATAMI TELLS WORLD’S LEADERS

LET’S MAKE PEACE, NOT WAR, IRANIAN KHATAMI TELLS WORLD’S LEADERS
By Nina Kamran

NUITED NATIONS (NEW YORK) 9 Nov (IPS) Iranian cleric President Mohammad Khatami called on the international community on Friday to adopt dialogue among civilisations as a way to eliminate conflict and injustice in the world.

In a speech to the 189-nation U.N. General Assembly, Mr. Khatami, an "Islamic philosopher", also repeated his appeal to the United Nations General Secretary Kofi Annan to "lead" the international campaign against terrorism instead of the United Sates.

Repeating Iran’s earlier condemnation of the 11 September terrorist attacks on the United States, Mr. Khatami said the operations in America can only be the job of a group that have voluntarily severed their own ears and tongues, so that the only language with which they could communicate would be destroying and spreading death."

But at the same time he denounced the US-led military actions against the ruling Taleban and their "Al-Qa’eda" terrorist protege, adding that "not hearing the voice of the Afghan children, women, old men and old women, those whose only share of life has been embracing gradual death, permanent horror, starvation, and various types of diseases, too, is only possible for those whose ears are deafened with boasting too much of their power, so they not only do not hear the voice of their well-wishers, but also fail to hear the veiling of the oppressed".

Washington says the raids are aimed at punishing the Taleban rulers for shielding Mr. Osama Ben Laden, the Saudi-born anti-Western, anti-Jewish crusader blamed by Washington for masterminding the 11 September attacks on New York’s World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon in Washington D.C.

The General Assembly voted a year ago to proclaim this year a year of dialogue among civilizations, inspired by 1998 speeches to the assembly by Mr. Khatami and then-U.S. President Bill Clinton.

"Terrorists appear to spring up where injustice is entrenched and people became capable of carrying out crimes in which they themselves would die only when they were deprived of a good quality of life", the embattled and powerless Iranian President observed.

"The easiest thing to do for the politicians and military commanders is to blame the nasty conduct of a certain country, group or followers of a religion for the disastrous (September 11) US incident, the whole terrorist disasters, and all the miseries suffered by the victims of brutality in different parts of the world", Mr. Khatami noted.

He also proposed to Mr. Annan to arrange a meting between the world's heads of states to draft the sketch of an effective global campaign against international terrorism, aimed at uprooting that "ill-natured phenomenon".

"It is the most appropriate historic moment to hesitate and contemplate about the causes and effects of this catastrophe, a unique opportunity that can be employed in the service of constructing a bright new world in which peace, freedom and justice would prevail".

President Khatami advised the mankind and the world leaders to wash their hands off "intentional deafness," to which they seem to pretend. "the inescapable result of such voluntary deafness and not hearing the voice of our opponents is the outbreak of devastating wars," argued the Iranian president.

But he did not say why then Iran refuses official talks with US or does not recognise Israel, a nation that the Islamic Republic not only does not recognise the existence, but also refer to it as a "cancerous tumour".

"Let us lovingly grip the hands of those who have extended them for kindness, rather than observing cruelty and hear the voice of life, the voice of kind human beings rather than the harsh noise of explosions", Mr. Khatami said.

"But a dialogue of words and deeds -- that is, of reciprocal actions based on respect and a genuine understanding of the other side's grievances -- can resolve disputes and prevent violent conflict", Mr. Annan said in his address to the conference.

Iranian analysts described Mr. Khatami’s speech "nice, but empty and impracticable slogans aimed at sterilising" the present campaign against international terrorism.

"This is a religious slaughtering of concepts from their meaning, the same as the freedom as proposed by Mr Khomeini or reforms as defended by Mr. Khameneh’i", said Dr. Mehdi Mozzafari, an Iranian scholar living in Copenhagen, noting the bundle closure of newspapers, the mass arrest and the murder of dissidents, torture of political prisoners or the ban on satellite dishes in the Islamic Republic.

In an earlier meeting with Mr. Annan, who this year shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the United Nations organisation, Mr. Khatami had warned against "precipitated reactions" to terrorist operations such as that of 11 September.

"Why should the oppressed people of Afghanistan pay the price for the terrorist acts committed by others?" Mr. Khatami told Mr. Annan, calling on him to put pressures on the Americans for stopping their military attacks on "the innocent people of Afghanistan" during the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

Touching on the formation of an interim government for Afghanistan after the fall of the Taleban, Mr. Khatami said the international body should watch against solutions imposed from outside, the official Iranian news agency IRNA reported from the meeting.

Convening a Loya Jirga, or an assembly of the elders, formed by all Afghan ethnics, religious and tribes, presided over by the former Afghan King Mohammad Zaher Shah is encouraged by the United Nations, the United States and the European Union.

But the solution is facing difficulties due to rivalries between Iran and Pakistan, Afghanistan’s powerful and interfering neighbours, as Tehran considers the ousted president Borhaneddin Rabbani and as the "sole legitimate" personality" to take over the Taleban while Islamabad is staunchly against any interim solution where the Northern Alliance would play the major role.

Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, the head of Iran’s Centre for Dialogue Among Civilisations Ataollah Mohajerani and deputy minister for Legal Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif, who would also address the Conference, accompanies President Khatami.

Contrary to expectations, Mr. Khatami did not presented his new pet project "Coalition for Peace" as opposed to "coalition for war", a reference to the coalition mounted by Washington to fight terrorism.

The two-day debate on the Year of Dialogue Among Civilisations is widely seen to have taken on greater importance in the wake of the September terrorist attacks against the United States. ENDS KHATAMI NEW YORK 91101.