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UN Will React if Clinton Repeats Iran Statements if in Office
By Rima Abdelkader
UNITED NATIONS, 02 May 2008:
Following Iran’s United Nations Mission letter to both the United Nations Security Council and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on United States Senator Hillary Clinton’s recent statement on Iran on ABC News, Ban’s spokesperson Ferhan Haq told me on Friday, “If she [Hillary Clinton] becomes president and she keeps saying that, then we’ll have to react,” when I followed up on the U.N.’s position.
Iran’s U.N. ambassador Mehdi Danesh-Yazdi in the letter partially quoted Clinton’s remarks on ABC News to correspondent Chris Cuomo on 22 April: “I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the President we will attack Iran,” she said.
“In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them,” Clinton added to Cuomo, not included in the letter.
Clinton said this in response to how she would respond if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons—context the Iranian ambassador unspecified in his letter or assumed Ban and the 15-member council was cognizant of when he cited it as “the interview on ABC news Channel on 22 April 2008.” See my story.
UK’s U.N. ambassador John Sawers, U.N. Security Council president for the month of May, told the U.N. press on Friday when asked on the Iranian letter, “The government of Iran has circulated a letter, has sent a letter and it has been circulated setting out his government’s concerns on that question. I have no comment to make on that statement by a candidate in the U.S. presidential election. I think it would be invidious to do so.”
Rima Abdelkader is a journalist based at the United Nations and can be reached at rima.abdelkader@gmail.com.
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