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Rafsanjani says US playing nursemaid to evil
Tehran, Jan 30, IRNA -- Former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani here
Wednesday lashed out at the US for playing nursemaid to evil since it
was Washington which raised the hardline Taliban and the terror
suspect al-Qaeda network to prominence.
His statements, made during a two-day Islamic media conference for
the support of the popular Palestinian uprising, came in response to
US President George W. Bush's naming of Iran, Iraq and North Korea as
'an axis of evil'.
'America today has become the nursemaid kinder than the mother,'
Rafsanjani said, citing a well-known Persian saying, despising
hypocritical anxiety.
'It (was the US which) conceived Taliban and the al-Qaeda in
Afghanistan. But, they turned later to evil to give pretext to America
to send troops all over the world,' he added.
Bush, in his first televised State of the Union address from the
House of Representatives chamber on Wednesday, used aggressive
language against Iran, accusing the country, along with Iraq and
North Korea, of attempting to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Rafsanjani denounced these remarks as 'baseless', beside
condemning another part of Bush's speech which had claimed that world
democracy is being threatened by the three mentioned countries.
'It is interesting that this pro-democracy claim is made by
somebody who has been elected with less than 25 percent of the popular
vote under a court intervention,' Rafsanjani, who is currently the
head of the arbitrative Expediency Council said.
'The American people, like members of the congress, may applaud
Bush and chant hurray for him. But, we will not be intimidated by
these pompous rhetoric since we know the truth,' he said.
He also refuted US president's dubbing of resistance movements in
Palestine and Lebanon, including Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and
Hizbullah, as terrorist.
'Who may approve of your action in collecting millions of Zionists
from around the world and driving Palestinians out of their houses and
replacing them with the Zionists?' Rafsanjani asked.
The former president further appealed to Islamic countries to use
their energy resources, top among them oil, as a weapon to redeem
their rights.
'One fourth of the world market is in the hand of the Islamic
world. In addition, the Islamic and Arab countries hold massive energy
resources which must not be put cheaply at the disposal of (the West
and America).
'I do not say we stop supplying our energy resources to them. What
I mean is that we must reclaim our rights by acting like them who
refuse to buy our energy whenever they want,' Rafsanjani added.
He asked the Islamic media to enlighten the world public opinion
to the ongoing developments in the Middle East and the occupied
Palestinians lands.
'The western media are intending to distort the events, much to
their own benefit,' Rafsanjani said.
Over one hundred representatives from more than 30 countries
participated at the 'Islamic media conference on support of the
Palestinian Intifada', sponsored by the Islamic Republic of Iran
Broadcasting (IRIB) here on Tuesday and Wednesday.
BH/AH
End
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