UNITED NATIONS — Egypt’s new President Mohammed Morsi, making his debut on the global stage at the United Nations, said Wednesday that he will not rest until the civil war in Syria ends.
He called the fighting there, which opposition groups say has killed at least 30,000 people, the “tragedy of the age” and one that “we all must end.” And he invited all nations to join an effort to stop the bloodshed that began about 18 months ago when opposition figures rose up against President Bashar Assad’s regime.
Morsi, an Islamist and key figure in the once-banned Muslim Brotherhood, opened his remarks to the U.N. General Assembly by celebrating himself as Egypt’s first democratically elected leader who was swept into office after what he called a “great, peaceful revolution.”
He said the first issue for the world body should be certifying the rights of the Palestinian people.
“The fruits of dignity and freedom must not remain far from the Palestinian people,” he said, adding that it was “shameful” that U.N. resolutions are not enforced. He decried Israel’s continued building of settlements on territory that the Palestinians claim for a future state in the West Bank.
Earlier Wednesday, Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, known for past fiery denunciations of the United States and Israel, spoke at length about his vision for a new world order without the “hegemony of arrogance.” And of Israel, he cited what he termed the “continued threat by the uncivilized Zionists to resort to military action against our great nation.”
He said his country has “suffered from the agonies of forced aggressions” from countries he didn’t identify. He said that an “arms race and intimidation by nuclear weapons andweapons of mass destruction by hegemonic powers have become prevalent.”
He complained that the United Nations has no legitimacy, while he praised the Non-Aligned Movement, which met weeks ago in Tehran with the Iranian regime presiding. Ahmadinejad said he spoke for the group.
“A state of mistrust has cast its shadow on the international relations, whilst there is no trusted or just authority to help resolve world conflicts,” he said.
He did not refer to Iran’s nuclear program. Israel and Western nations contend that Tehran is using what it insists is a peaceful nuclear program as a cover for developing the ability to build atomic weapons. Iran is suffering under tough sanctions as punishment for Iran’s failure to cooperate with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency to prove the peaceful nature ofits drive to enrich uranium to levels that could be used to build a nuclear weapon.
Israel has threatened a military strike against Iranian nuclear installations, but U.S. President Barack Obama insists that time remains to solve the dispute through diplomacy. Obama has vowed, however, to stop Tehran from obtaining a nuclear arsenal.
The U.S. delegation boycotted Ahmadinejad’s speech in response to the “paranoid theories and repulsive slurs against Israel” included in a separate address delivered by the Iranian president Monday.
“It’s particularly unfortunate that Mr. Ahmadinejad will have the platform of the U.N. General Assembly on Yom Kippur, which is why the United States has decided not to attend,” Erin Pelton, spokesman for the U.S. Mission to the U.N. said in a statement.
Ahmadinejad didn’t dwell for long on his regime’s disputes with Israel, as he has in earlier remarks to the media this week. In an interview Monday, he said Israel’s presence in the Middle East would be only a short-term one, and predicted that before long it would be “eliminated.”
Before the U.N., he took aim at the materialism of the West and what he saw as the corruption of the American political system. He said the wealthy in the United States spend “hundreds of millions of dollars” on elections, spending they viewed as just “an investment.”
Powerful Americans don’t care, he said, “about the 99 percent.”
Another Arab leader making his first appearance at the U.N. General Assembly’s annual ministerial meeting after being swept into power by the Arab Spring revolutions was Yemen’s President AbedRabbo Mansour Hadi. He took office in February after more than a year of political turmoil and is now trying to steer his country’s democratic transition.
Hadi called on the U.N. to grant membership to Palestine and support a transfer of power in Syria.
Also Wednesday, members of the U.N. Security Council are scheduled to discuss change in the Arab world. With no sign of an end to the Security Council’s paralysis over intervening to end the raging Syrian civil war, Germany’s U.N. Ambassador Peter Wittig said his country chose to focus the council’s ministerial session on something new and positive in the Mideast - “the emergence of the Arab League as a regional actor that has proved to be essential for conflict resolution.”Information for this article was contributed by Diaa Hadid of The Associated Press and by Paul Richter of the Tribune Washington Bureau.
Front Section, Pages 5 on 09/27/2012