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TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran underlined its condemnation of the emergency Middle East peace summit on Tuesday as officials and the press again blasted Israel and the United States, as well as host nation Egypt. Anger erupted especially over a bid Monday by some 200 extremist Jews on Monday to lay a cornerstone for a Jewish temple at the Jerusalem mosque compound, which is the third holiest site in Islam. "For the illegal entity called Israel, the 'just solution' is nothing short of the dismantling of the al-Aqsa mosque and the erection in its place of a Jewish temple," the Kayhan International paper said. "Will there be a real jihad [holy struggle] against the Zionists like the liberation of [Jerusalem] in 1187 from over 90 years of Crusader occupation, or will Arabs and Muslims meekly accept the 'reality' after a few weeks of rhetoric and stone-throwing?" Before the main parties at the peace summit at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh agreed to end the violence, newspapers lashed out at the meeting. The pro-reform Iran Daily dismissed the gathering as an "American summit," adding: "Cairo, which gets $2 billion in American aid annually, was put under severe pressure by the U.S. administration to host the meeting." It said Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had taken a chance on a "risky venture" after earlier saying it could not host the meeting unless the "right conditions" were in place. The conservative Tehran Times said Palestinian demonstrators had "sent a clear message to those holding the summit that the time for talk is over." It added that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's plans to form a new unity government with hardliner Ariel Sharon, whose visit to al-Aqsa last month sparked the latest troubles, was "a clear message that he would never do justice to the oppressed Palestinians." "Resistance, not negotiation, is the solution to this half-century-old crisis," it said. The reformist Iran News said the "slapdash" summit was evidence that the U.S. was doing its "damnedest to give the world public opinion a rosier picture of their Middle East bastard protégé." If Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is "really worth his Palestinian salt, he should once and for all stand pat and make optimal use of the tidal waves of anger [in] Islamic countries against this illegitimate regime," it said. Foreign ministry spokesperson Hamid-Reza Asefi, cited in the press, also reiterated Iran's insistence on Islamic unity in the face of the bloodshed, which has left more than 100 people dead, most of them Palestinians, since late September. An Iranian charity on Monday announced plans to build 1,000 schools named after Palestinian "martyrs" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, while a state-run foundation said it would care for around 100 people wounded in the troubles. |
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