Netanyahu to UN chief: Your place is not in Tehran

Netanyahu urges UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon not to attend Non-Aligned Movement parley in Tehran, calls such a visit a "horrible mistake."

(JPost) "Mr. Secretary-General, your place is not in Tehran," Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu bluntly told UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Friday afternoon.

The comment came at the end of a phone conversation Netanyahu had with Ban to dissuade him from attending a summit of Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) members in Tehran at the end of the month. Netanyahu said such a trip would stain both Ban and the organization he heads.

Iran currently holds the chairmanship of NAM, a group of some 120 nations who claim not to be aligned with any major world power bloc. Netanyahu's conversation is the peak so far of Israeli efforts to convince as many countries as possible not to attend the meeting, or – at the very least – send only low-level representation.

Diplomatic officials said that a number of countries have indicated that they would be willing to send low level representatives, but that this would be much more difficult to justify if Ban himself attended the parley.

According to the officials, a number of countries have said that while they understand Israel's concern about the meeting giving legitimacy to the anti-Semitic regime of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, they were keen on preserving the NAM framework.

Netanyahu, in his conversation with Ban, said going to Iran would be a grave mistake even if done with "good intentions." He said there was no reason to go to a state which is anti-Semitic and has set as its goal the destruction of Israel.

More...