Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attacks Jews at UN food summit in Rome

By Malcolm Moore 
June 3, 2008
Telegraph
Original Source: – HYPERLINK http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/2069523/Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad-attacks-Jews-at-UN-food-summit-in-Rome.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/2069523/Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad-attacks-Jews-at-UN-food-summit-in-Rome.html
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has used his first trip to Western Europe to launch a new attack against Jews. 
Arriving in Rome for a United Nations summit, Mr Ahmadinejad said: The people of Europe have suffered the most harm from Zionists and today the costs of that falsified regime, whether political or economic, are on Europe's shoulders. 
He added: I do not believe my statements [at the conference] will cause any problems. People love what I say because they are trying to save themselves from the oppression of Zionists. 
Mr Ahmadinejad visited both Belarus and New York last year, but this is his first trip to a major European nation. Italy has refused to hold any talks with him, but was powerless to deny him entry because of United Nations rules regarding the summit. 
In the name of God, I love the Italian people, who are so rich with civilisation and history. Our two people have much shared history, he said. 
Hundreds of Roman Jews protested against his presence outside the Colosseum. 
Around 40 heads-of-state attended the first day of the Food Summit in Rome and Mr Ahmadinejad was due to be given the opportunity to address them and to hold a press conference on Tuesday afternoon. 
Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, was also due to get the opportunity to make a speech on Tuesday afternoon and could use the opportunity to lambast the West. At a previous UN food summit, in 2005, Mr Mugabe labelled the United States and Britain as terrorists. 
His wife Grace, who, at 42, is half his age, accompanied him to the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organisation where the summit is taking place. Instead of her customary shopping trip, she is expected to attend a lunch inside the building for the wives of the heads of state. 
Neither Mr Ahmadinejad or Mr Mugabe have been invited to a banquet this evening at Villa Madama for the other heads of state. The dinner is being hosted by Silvio Berlusconi and Ban Ki Moon, the secretary general of the UN. To avoid the embarrassment of not gaining entry, Mr Ahmadinejad will leave Rome this afternoon. 
As the summit kicked off, the head of the United Nations called for farming to increase by 50 per cent by 2030. Jacques Diouf, the head of the FAO, warned leaders that the amount of money spent on food aid for the third world had more than halved in real terms from £4 billion in 1980 to £1.7 billion in 2004. 
Resources to finance agricultural programmes in developing countries are decreasing, not rising, he said. He said his attempt to draw attention to the problem last December, and to ask for £800 million in grants for fertilizer and seed in the third world, had been ignored. 
He also criticised the emphasis placed by Western countries on global warming but the lack of attention to food. Nobody understands how a carbon market of $64 billion can be created in developed countries to offset global warming, but that no funds can be found to prevent the annual deforestation of 13 million hectares. 
Nobody understands how $11 billion to $12 billion a year subsidies in 2006 have had the effect of diverting 100 million tonnes of cereals from human consumption, mostly to satisfy a thirst for fuel for vehicles, he said. 
He called for the world to find £15 billion a year to give 862 million hungry people the right to food.