DUBAI: Hardliners in Iran’s parliament have summoned Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif over public comments condemning the Holocaust, the official news agency Irna reported yesterday.
Zarif, who is also Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, caused an uproar among conservatives in Iran when he called the Holocaust a “horrifying tragedy” in an interview with a German television station late last month.
He is due to appear in a closed session of parliament today in response to a petition signed by 54 lawmakers.
Holocaust denial has been a staple theme of public speeches in Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took this further by calling Nazi crimes against Jews “a myth.”
Ahmadinejad’s views hurt Iran’s international image and helped to energise international efforts to curb its nuclear programme, which the West suspects is aimed at obtaining a nuclear weapon but which Tehran says is entirely peaceful.
New reformist President Hassan Rowhani has tried to undo the damage by adopting a more conciliatory tone and engaging in negotiations with world powers to settle the nuclear dispute.
In sharp break with his predecessor, Rouhani himself called the Holocaust “reprehensible” in a US television interview.
Yemen tries Briton accused of smuggling
SANA’A: A British man on trial in Yemen for attempting to smuggle artefacts out of the southern Arabian country said yesterday he had thought they were merely bedouin souvenirs.
The financial manager was arrested in January when the objects were found in his suitcase as he prepared to fly to Mexico on holiday, according to the charge sheet.
His Yemeni oil firm posted bail, and his trial began yesterday.
“I thought these stones were homemade by bedouins. I wanted to take them as souvenirs, and I had no idea that they were artefacts,” the defendant said in court, according to an Arabic translation.
The prosecution accused the man of attempting to smuggle artefacts that are owned by the state, and of buying nine antiques from Yemenis in the provinces of Ma’arib and Hadramawt.
The judge ordered the prosecution to bring in the confiscated items, setting a new hearing for March 10.
Around 1,500 antiques, including coins and pre-Islamic stone carvings, have been confiscated at Sana’a airport over seven years, the Yemen Times daily reported in March 2013.
Yemen was the site of ancient civilisations, including the kingdom of Saba.Agencies
