Mottaki slams Obama, US human rights abuse

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has taken a swipe at US President Barack Obama’s double standard polices regarding Iran’s nuclear program and its internal affairs.

“The world is awash with US human rights violations in all forms and means, including the killing of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, the continuance of the notorious Guantanamo prison camp in Cuba, and the flagrant disregard for the Israeli regime’s genocide of Palestinians,” said Mottaki in a Saturday interview in Bahrain. he added

Considering Washington’s own black human rights record, the Obama administration has some nerve to pass judgment on Iran, he said.

Iran’s top diplomat went on to add that the Iranian people would never allow foreign interference in their countries affairs, because they are aware that it is only aimed at sowing discord.

His remarks came after US President Barack Obama, in accepting his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Thursday, expressed full support for the post-election unrest in Iran.

With regards to the “concern” expressed by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over Iran’s close ties with Latin American countries, Mottaki said such remarks starkly contradict the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961).

He added that the United States has no right to forcibly prevent countries from promoting relations with each other.

In a veiled reference to Iran’s business partners in Latin America, Clinton warned that having close ties with Iran would have inevitable consequences.

“We can only say that is a really bad idea for the countries involved,” said the former first lady. “If people want to flirt with Iran, they should take a look at what the consequences might well be for them. And we hope that they will think twice.”

This is while Washington’s long-standing interference in Latin America has had far greater consequences — to an extent that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva recently called on the US to develop fresh ties based on a “vision of partnership and not interference, of contribution and not intervention” with Latin American countries

The United States, discontent with the rise of socialist and leftist governments in its so-called strategic backyard, has a long history of interference in Latin American affairs.

In 1954, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) organized a covert intervention to oust the democratically-elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman.

Seven years later CIA planned, financed and executed an assault on Cuba known as The Bay of Pigs Invasion, designed to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro.

More than 20,000 American troops, meanwhile, landed in Dominican Republic in 1965 to sabotage the National Liberation Movements.

The CIA also orchestrated the 1973 Chilean coup d’?tat, in which the government of President Salvador Allende was overthrown. General Augusto Pinochet assumed power and established a military government that ruled until 1990.