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Iran urges UN to redefine enviro-crimes

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called on the UN to adopt a treaty to include environment destruction and pollution in “environmental crimes.”

“Unfortunately despite entering the twenty-first century and the expansion of global village mentality, and despite the environmental conventions and protocols, protecting natural resources, which are one of the orders of establishing peace and security in civil societies, are ignored,” Ahmadinejad said in an statement on the occasion of the International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict.

Ahmadinejad said national and ethnic conflicts in different parts of the world and their trans-border impacts have affected all countries, the Iranian president’s official website quoted him as saying.

“Despite the passage of a few decades, the nuclear bombardment of Hiroshima by the US is still claiming human and nature [-related] victims and it has disrupted the growth of plants, animals and the revival of the ecosystem.”

Iran is one of the countries, which has suffered the direct and indirect consequences of wars in the region over the past three decades, Ahmadinejad said.

“We still witness the damages resulting from using chemical weapons by Saddam [Hussein]’s Baath regime during the [eight-year Iraq-] imposed war [on Iran], which led to the pollution of ecosystems especially water and soil resources in some parts of Iran.”

The Iranian president added that the crisis has been intensified due to the presence of foreign forces in the strategic Persian Gulf region, the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the establishment of foreign military bases and consequently the increase of water pollution as a result of using weaponry.

“Using different technologies to generate and consume energy and drive out rivals in different economic fields has resulted in phenomena such as global warming and the increased emission of greenhouse gases,” Ahmadinejad said.

Iran presents the proposal to the United Nations to devise a mechanism or adopt a treaty to include the destruction and pollution environment in environmental crimes, Ahmadinejad added.

Iran also invites the international community to formulate, adopt and implement the “International Convention for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict,” the Iranian president concluded.

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