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Iran's leader sparks Western walkout at UN meeting
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-04-20 23:57

Iran's leader sparks Western walkout at UN meeting
Demonstrators stand outside the press conference room after Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the Durban Review Conference on racism at the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva April 20, 2009.  [Agencies]
Speaking directly after Ahmadinejad, Norway's foreign minister said the Iranian leader's comments "run counter to the very spirit of dignity of the conference."

Ahmadinejad "has made Iran the odd man out," Jonas Gahr Store said.

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Even before his speech, Ahmadinejad polarized the meeting, which is intended to examine all forms of intolerance around the world.

Israel recalled its ambassador to Switzerland earlier Monday to protest Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz's meeting with Ahmadinejad late Sunday during which Merz pressed the case of a jailed American journalist in Tehran.

"The meeting between the president of a democratic country with an infamous Holocaust-denier such as the president of Iran, who calls for Israel's destruction, does not mesh with the values that Switzerland represents and that are supposed to be represented at the UN conference on racism," the Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

President Barack Obama said Sunday that the United States would communicate with Iran about journalist Roxana Saberi through its Swiss intermediaries, which have officially represented U.S. interests in Iran since the American hostage crisis that began in 1979. The Swiss government said it also took up other "unresolved cases" of U.S.-Iranian relations.

Ahmadinejad's attendance has provoked outrage from Jewish groups and Israel, as he has in the past questioned the Holocaust and called for Israel's destruction.