By IANS/RIA Novosti,
Washington : The recent attacks on US embassies represent an “assault on the very ideals upon which the UN was founded,” US President Barack Obama told the UN General Assembly Tuesday.
“If we are serious about these ideals, we must speak honestly about the deeper causes of this crisis,” Obama told UN delegates.
“Because we face a choice between the forces that would drive us apart, and the hopes that we hold in common.”
A short YouTube video defaming Prophet Mohammed sparked violent riots in several Arab and other predominantly Muslim nations earlier this month.
In Libya, militants ransacked the US embassy in Benghazi in an apparently planned attack amid protests of the video, killing the US ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
Anti-American protestors also managed to breach the US embassy in Cairo as well.
“Today, we must affirm that our future will be determined by people like Chris Stevens, and not by his killers,” Obama told the General Assembly.
“Today, we must declare that this violence and intolerance has no place among our United Nations.”
Obama opened his speech with a tribute to Stevens, saying he “embodied the best of America” who “built bridges” across cultures.
The violence across the Arab world in the wake of the YouTube video has forced the Obama administration to confront the turbulent aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings it supported in countries like Libya and Egypt.