IRAN’S PRESIDENT has launched an angry attack on “doomed” US- brokered Middle East peace talks and has urged Palestinians to continue armed resistance to Israel.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used the annual al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day rally in Tehran to scorn the Obama administration’s efforts in launching the first Arab-Israeli negotiations in nearly two years.
“What do they want to negotiate about? Who are they representing? What are they going to talk about?” the hardline Iranian leader said of the Palestinian negotiating team in Washington.
“Who gave them the right to sell a piece of Palestinian land? The people of Palestine and the people of the region will not allow them to sell even an inch of Palestinian soil to the enemy. The negotiations are stillborn and doomed.”
Iran supports Hamas, whose armed wing killed four Israeli settlers near Hebron on Tuesday.
Iranian state media reported that millions of people turned out in Tehran and elsewhere for al- Quds rallies. The regime however took pre-emptive measures to prevent opposition supporters using the rallies to show their defiance.
Mehdi Karroubi, one of the two reformist candidates defeated by Mr Ahmadinejad in last summer’s presidential race, was prevented from joining the Tehran rally.
Mr Karroubi’s website reported that revolutionary guardsmen and basij militiamen had surrounded his home while supporters of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, smashed windows and beat up one of his guards.
Mir-Hossein Mousavi, leader of the defeated Green movement, said the government’s “enmity against Israel is an excuse” for attacking opposition leaders.
Iran’s opposition has not managed to hold any big demonstrations in recent months. – (Guardian service)