ISRAEL CALLS FOR IRAN'S EXPULSION FROM U.N.

Israel Seeks Iran's Expulsion From United Nations

JERUSALEM  — Israel's vice prime minister said Iran should be expelled from the United Nations after its new president said Israel should be "wiped off the map," and Britain summoned an Iranian diplomat Thursday to protest the remarks.

 

Italy on Thursday also condemned the words of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, telling the Iranian ambassador the comments were "unacceptable" and that they confirm worries over the political positions — and nuclear intentions — of Iran's new leadership.

 

Shimon Peres, Israel's vice prime minister and a Nobel peace laureate, said it was "impossible to ignore" Ahmadinejad's comments. "Since the United Nations was established in 1945, there has never been a head of state that is a U.N. member state that publicly called for the elimination of another U.N. member state," Shimon Peres told Israel Radio.

 

In a speech Wednesday in Tehran, Ahmadinejad said "there is no doubt that the new wave [of attacks] in Palestine will wipe off this stigma [Israel] from the face of the Islamic world." Ahmadinejad spoke during a conference called "The World Without Zionism."