Khatami faces flak in U.S. and in Iran

[ECH1969]

Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami's visit to the United States is drawing fire there and also from Muslim clerics back home.

Khatami's five-city U.S. tour this week drew the wrath of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Jewish human rights group, which fought the U.S. decision to grant him a visa with a 14,000-signature petition, CNN reported.

In Tehran, a newspaper called the U.S. visa "suspicious" and one critic suggested the Shiite cleric should be defrocked for committing "worse than a sin" in his trip, the Washington Post reported.

In an interview with CNN, Khatami broke with his hard-line successor, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and said he does not call for Israel's destruction.

http://www.politicalgateway.com/news/read/34573

[Eugene]

1. AP: Romney orders state agencies not to cooperate with Iranian leader (MA)

Romney orders state agencies not to cooperate with Iranian leader

By Glen Johnson, AP Political Writer | September 5, 2006

BOSTON --Gov. Mitt Romney on Tuesday ordered all state agencies
to refuse any assistance -- if it is requested -- when the former
president of Iran visits Massachusetts this weekend.

The Republican chief executive, a potential candidate for his party's
2008 presidential nomination, said Mohammed Khatami oversaw torture
and the murder of dissidents, as well as Iran's secret nuclear program,
while in office from 1997 to 2005.

"State taxpayers should not be providing special treatment to an
individual who supports violent jihad and the destruction of Israel,"
Romney said in a statement.

The U.S. State Department will be providing security for Khatami during
his visit Sunday to the Boston area, which will include a speech
at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Romney's
action, however, means Khatami will be denied an official police escort
and other VIP treatment when he is in town.

-snip-

Full article: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/09/05/romney_orders_state_agencies_not_to_cooperate_with_iranian_leader

I know, Khatami is not Ahmadinejad, but Mittens is a Bushbot with no class.

[IndianaGreen]

2. Romney's posturing should merit a generous contribution from the Israel

Lobby. They love anyone that demonizes anything Iranian.

[Rex]

3. So if Khatami goes to Starbucks and starts choking on a bagel

he will just have to die? Mittens must be one dumb motherfucker.

[IndianaGreen]

4. 'America's aggression is fuelling extremism', says Iran's ex-president

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, together with AIPAC and other self-appointed defenders of Israel, are lobbying for war against Iran, just as they did for war against Iraq. This is what they don't want people to hear:

Robert Fisk: 'America's aggression is fuelling extremism', says Iran's ex-president
By Robert Fisk in Chicago
Published: 04 September 2006

As the West's "war on terror" burns across the Muslim world, one of Islam's most principled leaders - the former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami - issued a grave warning yesterday from the very heart of America, the country whose troops and allies are fighting Islamists across the Middle East in a war that is costing thousands of Muslim lives.

"The policies of the neo-conservatives have created a war that creates more extremists and radicals," he told The Independent in Chicago. "The events of 9/11 gave them this ability to create fear and anxiety ... and to create new policies of their own and now events are creating an expansion of extremists on both sides. A struggle is under way to dominate this world multilaterally ... We are a witness to war - with suppression from one side and extremist reaction in the form of terror from the other."

Mr Khatami might appear an improbable figure in the breakfast room of one of Chicago's smartest hotels, dressed in his black turban and long gown, his spectacles giving him t+he appearance of a university don - which he once was - rather than the seer of Iran, a man whose demands for a civil society and democracy at home were overwhelmed by the ascetic clerics who surround the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. Yet he is enormously important in the Sunni as well as the Shia Muslim worlds as a philosopher-scholar, which is probably why the Bush administration gave him a visa, and his message was the sharpest he has ever delivered to the Muslim world and the secular West.

The former president said: "We have to find ways to confront these people on both sides. We need public opinion to be influenced ... And now the neo-conservative policies have created this sort of war."

But Mr Khatami, who defended Iran's role in the nuclear crisis between the West and Tehran - he asked why Israel was allowed nuclear weapons while refusing to sign the nuclear non-proliferation pact - did not spare the perpetrators of what he called "the inhumane terrorist attacks" of 11 September 2001. "I was one of the first officials to condemn this barbaric act ... this inferno would only intensify extremism and one-sidedness and would have no outcome except to retard justice and intellect and sacrifice righteousness and humanity," he said.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1359829.ece