Shall We Ask the Pope To Explain The Problem To Him?

Mr. Obama, this example is not very encouraging to us here in Israel.

'For us, it's an honor to support Hamas'

Iran's parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani defended the Holocaust denial statements of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and stressed Teheran's support for Hamas at the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy on Friday.

Responding to Larijani's comments about the Shoah, Pierre Lellouche, a French legislator attending the conference, noted it was unlawful in France to deny the crimes of the Holocaust.

"In Iran, we don't have the same sensitivities," countered Larijani, who formerly served as Iran's chief nuclear negotiator.

Larijani's brother, Mohammad Javad Ardashir Larijani, himself a former politician, denied the Holocaust at a transatlantic security conference organized by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Berlin last June.

...Lellouche added that Larijani's "rhetoric is not very encouraging when it concerns world peace."

Spiegel Online reported that Eckart von Klaeden, foreign policy spokesman of the German Christian Democratic Union party, blasted Larijani for Iran supporting terrorism.

"You know, more than 8,000 rockets have been fired from the Gaza Strip at Israel," and the Iranian president supplies Hamas and Hizbullah with rockets, he said. Iran's support for its proxies Hamas and Hizbullah had turned the Islamic republic "into a danger for the region," Von Klaeden added.

"For us it is an honor to support Hamas," Larijani replied.

...Obama has said the US is ready for direct talks with Iran in efforts to overcome concerns that its nuclear program could be used to develop atomic weapons. Teheran denies that and insists its aims are peaceful. The former US administration refused one-on-one negotiations with Teheran on the issue unless it made significant nuclear concessions beforehand.

There was no immediate US reaction to Larijani's comments.