New York, September 24: The European Union Thursday said its 27 members walked out on a UN speech by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad because his claims were “outrageous and unacceptable”.
Catherine Ashton, the EU high representative for foreign affairs, was reacting to claims by the Iranian leader that the US government had “orchestrated” the 2001 terrorist attacks to “reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime.”
Delegates from the US and the EU walked past Ahmadinejad and out of the UN General Assembly session in protest while he spoke.
Ashton said in a statement that his “assertions” were “outrageous and unacceptable”.
“It is for this reason that all representatives of the 27 nations of the EU walked out of the UNGA hall,” she said.
She expressed EU solidarity “with the families and friends of those killed or injured in the 9/11 attacks”.
More than 2,700 people died when the World Trade Centre towers crashed to the ground after being bombarded by two hijacked passenger planes. All told, nearly 3,000 people died that day, as two other planes plowed into the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.
Ahmadinejad said those numbers paled next to the hundreds of thousands who have died in US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since then.
–IANS