Tripoli, June 01: An Iranian official has criticized the West’s double-standard approach to the issue of human rights in the Middle East and North Africa and condemned the NATO-led war in Libya as “unacceptable.”
“Politically motivated and instrumental approaches to the honorable issue of human rights are by no means acceptable and will yield no result,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for European Affairs Ali Ahani said in a meeting with the director general of the Middle East and North Africa Department of the Swedish Foreign Ministry, Robert Rydberg, in Tehran on Tuesday.
“The devastation of Libya’s economic infrastructure by NATO’s bombardments, based on wrong and egotistical interpretations of the [UN] Security Council’s resolution, is unacceptable and deplorable,” Ahani stated.
The Iranian deputy foreign minister urged the international community to compel the Western powers to revise their biased approach to the recent developments in the Middle East and North Africa.
“The international community’s efforts to enforce a basic democratic framework based on respect for the principle ‘one individual, one vote’ will make a great contribution to solving the issues in the region,” Ahani asserted.
NATO has conducted hundreds of sorties over Libya since it assumed control of a military campaign to impose a no-fly zone over the country and save civilian lives in late March.
Recent reports indicate that many civilians have also been killed in the UN-mandated aerial offensives.
NATO itself has admitted to killing revolutionary fighters and civilians in an airstrike in eastern Libya but has adamantly refused to apologize for the deadly bombardment.
Rydberg said the people of certain countries in the Middle East and North Africa began uprisings in order to regain their dignity and challenge entrenched dictatorships.
He also pointed to Iran’s key role in the region and highlighted the importance of improving Tehran-Stockholm ties.
——–Agencies