Mottaki in New York for UN General Assembly

Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has arrived in New York to take part in the general debates of the 64th session of the UN General Assembly.

Mottaki’s arrival comes a day before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s scheduled arrival, Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported Monday.

More than 120 presidents and prime ministers and dozens of foreign ministers will attend the General Assembly’s annual ministerial meeting, which opened last Tuesday and will run through September 28.

Climate change is to take center stage at the talks as well as other topics such as agricultural development and food security, global health, foreign policy, and human rights.

Other than President Ahmadinejad, the US President Barack Obama and the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu are among other heads of states that will address the General Assembly with quite different perspectives.

While President Ahmadinejad’s speech is expected to focus on the need for establishment of a global peace, a world without nuclear weapons, and security in the Middle East, it is widely expected that Netanyahu’s address will focus on blaming Iran’s nuclear program as a threat to its security and ‘global peace’.

According to the American UN Ambassador Susan Rice, Obama’s speech will address topics such as terrorism, genocide, mass atrocities, cyber attacks, nuclear activities in Iran and North Korea, pandemic diseases and international criminal networks.

A Monday repot by an Israeli daily, the Jerusalem Post said that Netanyahu will accuse Tehran of threatening Israel and the entire world with its nuclear program.

The head of the Middle East’s only nuclear-armed regime which does not abide by any international regulatory body, will likely claim that Iran is also a threat to ‘the entire free world’,

The Hawkish Israeli premier is also expected to reject a recent UNHCR report that has clearly implicated Tel Aviv for war crimes committed against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip during its military campaign in the coastal region.

The report says that the UN committee has found evidence of repeated violations of international law, “possible war crimes and crimes against humanity” during the Israeli aggression.

This is while the Iranian president will probably express support for the UN report and urge state members to adopt a firm stance against Israel’s war crimes.

The UNHCR report calls for prosecution of Israeli officials at the International Criminal Court.