Tehran - Iranian Vice-President Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaei has
been summoned by parliament for having made pro-Israeli comments,
ISNA news agency reported Tuesday.
The cultural commission of the parliament has called for a special
session on Wednesday with Rahim-Mashaei for him to reply to
'questions, ambiguities and criticism' by the deputies over the
comments.
The vice-president, who is in charge of cultural heritage and
tourism, said that Iran would be friends with both the Israeli and
American people despite political problems with the two countries. He
emphasized this position again on Monday.
Reacting to Rahim-Mashaei's comments, parliament speaker Ali
Larijani on Monday reiterated that Iran was no friend of the
Israelis.
The reaction by the parliament and Larijani was surprising as the
vice-president's remarks are in line with the stance of Iran's
Islamic system which distinguishes peoples from governments,
including political arch-foes Israel and the United States.
Even President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had has earned himself
international notoriety for his frequent verbal assaults on Israel,
has several times stressed that he was addressing the Israeli
administration and not the Jews, and hence rejected charges of being
anti-Semitic.
Iran does acknowledge Israel as a sovereign state and has called
for a referendum in what it calls the 'occupied territories' to
clarify the future political situation. Tehran says that Jews should
live besides Moslems but in a Palestinian and not Israeli land.
Ahmadinejad has voiced hopes for the eradication of Israel from
the Middle East, demanding its relocation to Europe or Alaska, and he
also expressed doubts about the historic dimension of the Holocaust
during World War II.
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