Additional reporting by Riad Zien Edeen, IOL Correspondent

TEHRAN, October 12 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - An Iranian military commander called for the creation of a 100 million strong Islamic militia to free Palestine, as some 10,000 protestors burned Israeli and U.S. flags Friday, October 11, in the capital.

The demonstrators took to the streets after the weekly Muslim prayers in response to calls from conservatives within the Islamic regime, incensed at a new U.S. law effectively recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“If just a tenth of the world's one billion Muslims joined a worldwide militia, the Jewish state could be overthrown”, Revolutionary Guards commander Yahyia Rahim Safavi told Iranian militiamen in the town of Semnan, east of the capital.

"The sole way of defeating the Zionist regime is to create an Islamic militia with the assistance of all the Muslim peoples of the world," the official IRNA news agency quoted Safavi as telling some 15,000 militiamen taking part in a military exercise.

"If one-tenth of the world's Muslims take part and set up an Islamic militia of 100 million people, then all Muslim peoples will be able to participate in the holy war for the liberation of Palestine.

"The U.S. goal in attacking Iraq is not to overthrow President Saddam Hussein, but to safeguard the Zionist regime," Safavi told the young militiamen, part of a seven million strong force which the Islamic regime has used in the past to put down unrest on the streets.

Rafsangani

In the capital, some 10,000 demonstrators marched from Tehran University to Palestine Square in the city center after the prayers, carrying pictures of Jerusalem surrounded by barbed wire in the shape of the Star of David.

"Death to Israel, Death to America," the protestors chanted before torching huge Israeli and U.S. flags.

Large numbers of Iranian officials, as well as Palestinians wounded during the Intifada against the Israeli occupation - being treated at Iranian hospitals - took part in the demonstration.

For his part, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mehdi Karroubi said that the crisis in Palestine would be settled only through establishment of a Palestinian government.

Talking during the anti-U.S. march in Tehran, Karroubi said Iranians have slapped the global arrogance in the mouth by massively participating in the anti-American rally, according to Iranian news agency IRNA.

“The United States is after imposing its domination over the Mideast region with recognizing Beit-ul Moqaddas (Jerusalem) as the capital of the Israeli regime. Beit-ul-Moqaddas is the first Qibla of Muslims and the revolutionary Muslim generation would not remain silent on the issue”, the speaker added.

Karroubi said the United States was behind recent bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, in which 14 Palestinians were killed and near 100 others injured in an Israeli missile attack.

U.S. President George W. Bush last week signed into law the 2003 Foreign Relations Authorization Act, a funding bill which also called for the transfer of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

But in an accompanying message, dismissed by observers and law professors as “meaningless and void”, Bush reserved the right to ignore provisions of the bill that infringe on his constitutional responsibility for U.S. foreign policy.

Washington has long said it will take no steps that might prejudge the status of the holy city, which is also claimed as capital by the Palestinians, ahead of a Middle East peace settlement.

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