topic by
John Calvin
12/14/2001 (15:52)

thr 048
Iran-Qods Day-Rally /POL/
Millions of Iranians march in anti-Israeli Qods Day rallies
Tehran, Dec 14, IRNA -- Millions of Iranians marched through streets
Friday in annual Qods Day rallies to show their solidarity with
Palestinians and condemn heightened Israeli violence in the occupied
lands.
President Mohammad Khatami joined demonstrators in capital
Tehran to mark the day which was first called by the founder of the
Islamic Revolution late Imam Khomeini in 1980, turning to an annual
international event which falls on the last Friday of the fasting
month of Ramadhan.
'Death to Israel' and 'Death to America', the demonstrators
chanted in Tehran. 'Oh, Muslims; Unite! Unite!'. Some of them carried
placards, reading 'Palestine belongs to Palestinians' and 'Zionist
terrorism is condemned.
Religious minorities, including Jews and Christians, were
reported to have participated in the rallies throughout Iran.
Iranian Jewish MP Maurice Motemed had earlier pledged that his
coreliginists would participate in the Qods Day demonstrations.
He had denounced Zionists' escalation of the ongoing crisis in
the Middle East, saying the tensions would eventually lead to their
own destruction.
Arabic and patriotic songs were broadcast from loudspeakers,
while several fund raising stations were set up throughout the capital
to collect people's aid for Palestinians.
The demonstrators converged at the Tehran University campus
where a resolution was read out, blaming the racist Israeli regime
for the Palestinian crisis.
'We believe that the US' unsparing and all-out support for the
Zionist Regime has been the key to the growing suppression and
massacre of the Palestinian nation by the occupiers of Palestine,'
it said.
'We announce that the cancerous tumor of Israel is the top threat
to the Middle East and the world of Islam,' it said, adding
'confronting this malignant tumor is a moral, Islamic and national
duty of Muslim states.'
The resolution dubbed hardline Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
'a butcher' who had to be brought to justice on criminal charges.
Tehran does not recognize the Zionist regime and has always
expressed its moral support for resistance groups in the occupied
lands.
The newly-established Qods news agency QODSNA, which covers
issues of Palestine, cited Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi as saying
Thursday that the international community had to take up a new
approach toward the ongoing crisis in the Middle East, since the old
methods were too obsolete to tackle existing problems.
He urged the world to mobilize their efforts for the establishment
of 'just peace' in the occupied Palestinian lands amid a worrying
escalation of the Middle East crisis in the wake of the Israeli
military blitz.
BH/JB
End
::irna 17:18