By DPA,
Geneva : UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Monday the speech of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the Durban Review Conference on racism here.
“I deplore the use of this platform by the Iranian president to accuse, divide and even incite,” Ban said in a statement. “This is the opposite of what this conference seeks to achieve.”
He said the speech would make it more difficult to deal with the “very real problem of racism”.
Earlier, the two met on the sidelines of the conference. During the conversation with the controversial president, Ban said there was a “need to look to the future of unity, not to the past of divisiveness”.
“The Secretary-General reminded the president that the UN General Assembly had adopted the resolution to revoke the equation of Zionism with racism,” a statement read.
They also discussed the conference, regional peace and security, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East as well as the Iranian nuclear issue, the UN said in a statement.
Ahmadinejad has also in the past made derisive statement against Israel and questioned whether the Holocaust in fact happened.