DUSHANBE, September 24, 2010, Asia-Plus — In a statement delivered at the 65th session of the UN General Assembly in New York, President Emomali Rahmon noted on September 23 that due to renewed political will of leaders opportunities to increase collective efforts to ensure sustainable progress in implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have been created.
Further promotion depends on joint concerted and consistent actions of international community that should be conducted under central and coordinating role of the United Nations, Rahmon noted.
According to him, adequate financial resources are needed against the backcloth of energy, food and financial crises as well as effects of climate changes. “In this connection, appeal for doubling volumes of an official aid for development, which is an important component of financial development, remains topical,” President Rahmon stressed.
The Tajik head of state considers that allocation of additional external support must not be accompanied by toughening debt obligations for developing countries.
Leaders of the United States, Brazil, Switzerland, Pakistan, Ukraine, China, and other states made speeches during general political discussions.
In the meantime, international media report that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad provoked yet another controversy Thursday saying a majority of people in the United States and around the world believe the American government staged the Sept. 11 terror attacks in an attempt to assure Israel”s survival.
The comments prompted the U.S. delegation to walk out of Ahmadinejad”s U.N. speech, where he also blamed the U.S. as the power behind U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, a technology that can be used as fuel for electricity generation or to build nuclear weapons.
Delegations from all 27 European Union nations followed the Americans out along with representatives from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Costa Rica, an EU diplomat said, according to Associated Press.
Ahmadinejad said the U.S. has allocated $80 billion to upgrade its nuclear arsenal and is not a fair judge to sit as a veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council to punish Iran for its nuclear activities. Iran denies it is seeking a nuclear weapon.
The Iranian leader — who has in the past cast doubt over the U.S. version of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — also called for setting up an independent fact-finding U.N. team to probe the attacks. That, he said, would keep the terror assault from turning into what he has called a sacred issue like the Holocaust where “expressing opinion about it won”t be banned”.
Ahmadinejad did not explain the logic behind blaming the U.S. for the terror attacks but said there were three theories:
– That a “powerful and complex terrorist group” penetrated U.S. intelligence and defenses, which is advocated “by American statesmen.”
– “That some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime. The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree with this view.”
After Ahmadinejad uttered those words, two American diplomats stood and walked out without listening to the third theory: That the attack was the work of “a terrorist group but the American government supported and took advantage of the situation.”
Ahmadinejad said the U.S. used the Sept. 11 attacks as a pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of people. He argued that the U.S., instead, should have “designed a logical plan” to punish the perpetrators and not occupy two independent states and shed so much blood.
Ahmadinejad”s attacks on the United States and the dispute over Iran”s nuclear program dominated the opening of the General Assembly”s annual ministerial meeting.
