Western UN delegates walk out on Ahmadinejad at UN

Sep 22, 2011, 18:51 GMT

New York - Western United Nations delegates walked out of the General Assembly on Thursday in New York after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once again questioned the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the Holocaust in World War II.

Ahmadinejad on Thursday used his entire 30-minute address to the to accuse the US and other Western governments of undermining international law, prompting the walkouts that have become an annual feature of his UN speech.

While he spoke inside UN headquarters, protests were held against Ahmadinejad's presence in New York. Similar protests followed him in previous years as well.

'The suspicious 9/11 incident was used by the United States as a pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, just as the Holocaust was used to suppress independent nations and committing crimes,' Ahmadinejad said.

'Anybody, including me and the Iranian nation, who dare to question 9/11 or the Holocaust, are immediately condemned and threatened by the US,' he said.

He said that with the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden earlier this year the US had eliminated someone who could have 'shed some light on the incident and threw him into the sea.'

Ahmadinejad also took the US to task as the main country to blame for the global crisis.

'The socio-economic crisis has continued because they (rich countries) infringe upon the rights of nations, causing irreparable damage on the world,' he said, citing statistics that about 3 billion people live on less than 2.50 dollars a day. The World Bank and UN however put that figure of extreme poverty at around 1 billion people.