Middle East News

Iran calls on Arabs to make no concessions towards Israel

May 21, 2007, 14:23 GMT

Tehran - Iran on Monday called on the Arab countries not to make any concessions towards Israel.

'The Zionist regime (Israel) is in one of its weakest situations, especially after the military failure in Lebanon which caused an earthquake within the regime,' Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told the Al-Alam television.

'Therefore one should be careful not to make any concessions or grant any advantages to a regime which is on the verge of collapse,' Mottaki said in the interview with the Arab-language news network affiliated to Iran's state television.

He reiterated that Iran has in the last three decades refused to acknowledge Israel as a sovereign state and would do so in the future.

Mottaki further expressed doubt that Israel would accept the Saudi-backed four-year-old Arab-Israeli peace initiative.

The 2002 Arab initiative promises full normalization with Israel and Arab recognition of the Jewish state in return for a full Israeli pullout from the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem, and a withdrawal from the Golan Heights in Syria and some territories in southern Lebanon.

The proposal also includes terms that would guarantee the right of return for thousands of Palestinian refugees stranded in poor conditions across Arab host countries.

'If all terms are accepted by the Zionist regime (Israel), then we would consider it as acknowledgement of parts of the Palestinian nation's right,' Mottaki said without however expressing Iran's acceptance of the plan.

'The people in the region (Middle East) will no longer tolerate any aggression and stand against it,' the minister said.

He reiterated that Iran would only accept the outcome of a referendum made by all Palestinians, including refugees, regardless of whether they were Muslims, Christians or Jews.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad caused international furore in 2005 after he called for a wiping-out of Israel from the Islamic world by Palestinian resistance fighters and describing the Holocaust a 'fairy tale.'

Iranian officials tried to modify the president's remarks on several occasions and blamed the Western press for having intentionally distorted them.

Ahmadinejad himself later clarified that Iran would never initiate any attack against Israel adding that the Holocaust incidents in the Second World War should be no excuse for the Jewish state for making another Holocaust in Palestine.