Without naming Iran, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon denounced his hosts in Tehran on Thursday for threatening to destroy Israel and for denying the Holocaust.
"I strongly reject threats by any member state to destroy another or outrageous attempts to deny historical facts such as the Holocaust," Ban said in his speech to a Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in the Iranian capital.
"Claiming that Israel does not have the right to exist or describing it in racist terms is not only wrong but undermines the very principle we all have pledged to uphold," he added.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly denied the Holocaust and this month described Israel as a "cancerous tumor". In 2005 he caused uproar by being quoted as saying that Israel should be "wiped off the map".
Persian language scholars say a more correct translation of his comment would read: "Israel must vanish from the page of time."
Ban was attending the NAM summit despite calls from the United States and Israel that he should boycott the event.
Earlier Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran has no interest in nuclear weapons but will keep pursuing peaceful nuclear energy.
Iran, hosting a summit of the 120-nation Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), is hoping the high-profile event will prove that Western efforts to isolate it and punish it economically for its disputed nuclear program have failed.
"Our motto is nuclear energy for all and nuclear weapons for none," Khamenei told the assembled heads of state.
But discord over Syria swiftly marred the summit when Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi urged member states to support Syrians striving to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, whose staunchest regional ally is Iran.
"Our solidarity with the struggle of the Syrian people against an oppressive regime that has lost its legitimacy is an ethical duty as it is a political and strategic necessity," Morsi said, prompting a walkout by the Syrian delegation, according to the pan-Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera.
In response to Morsi's speech,
Syria’s ForeignMinister Walid Moallem accused Egypt's president of
conspiring for bloodshed in Syria.
It was not immediately clear if the Syrians had returned to the meeting after Morsi's speech.
Morsi's visit to Tehran was the first by an Egyptian leader since Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979, but his uncompromising speech suggested there would be no swift reconciliation between the two countries after three decades of animosity.
Diplomatic relations between Cairo and Tehran broke down immediately after Iran's revolution over Egypt's support for the overthrown Shah and over its peace agreement with Israel.
The NAM summit's final declaration is set to express deep concern about the violence in Syria and support for efforts by U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to broker a resolution to the conflict, a delegate at the meeting told Reuters.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, attending the Tehran summit, urged Khamenei late on Wednesday to take concrete steps to prove Iran's nuclear work is peaceful.
The West suspects Iran is seeking a nuclear weapons capability, an accusation Tehran denies.
In his speech, Khamenei criticized the U.N. Security Council as an illogical, unjust and defunct relic of the past used by the United States "to impose its bullying manner on the world".
"They (Americans) talk of human rights when what they mean is Western interests. They talk of democracy when what they have is military intervention in other countries," he added
Lebanon's Participation:
Lebanese President Michel Suleiman also participated in the opening conference of the 16th summit of NAM.
Within
the framework of the summit, the Lebanese President met his Egyptian
counterpart Muhammad Morsi.
The 2 presidents discussed bilateral
relations and ways to strengthen Arab solidarity, as well as imposing
the role of the Arab League in handling crisis and previously raised
files.
The presidents exchanged invitations for the development and strengthening of bilateral relations.
LBCI/REUTERS