UN chief rebuffs U.S., Israel to attend meeting in Iran
Efforts led by the United States and Israel to isolate Iran suffered a setback on Wednesday when the United Nations announced that Ban Kimoon, the secretary-general, would join officials from 120 countries in Tehran next week for a summit meeting that Iran has trumpeted as a vindication of its defiance and enduring importance in world affairs.
Ban’s decision to attend the meeting of the Nonaligned Movement came despite objections from both the Americans and Israelis, including a phone call from Prime Min- ister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
The decision was announced a few days after the new president of Egypt, a country that has long been estranged from Iran, said he would attend the summit meeting as well. Taken together, the moves reinforced Iran’s contention that a reordering of powers is underway in the Middle East, where Western influence is waning, and that the U.S.Israeli campaign to vilify Iran as a rogue state is not resonating in much of the world. The meeting of the Nonaligned Movement, a group formed during the Cold War, includes a number of other countries that the U.S. has sought to marginalize, among them North Korea and Sudan, whose president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, is wanted by the International Criminal Court. Although Iran’s hosting of the meeting is strictly a coincidence — under a rotating system, Iran presides over the group through 2014 — Iranian leaders have portrayed it as a privilege that repudiates the U.S. narrative. There was no immediate reaction to Ban’s decision from Israel. But according to Netanyahu’s office, he had phoned Ban on Aug.10 and told him that such a trip, even if wellintentioned, would be a mistake. Some Obama administration officials sought to put the best face on the situation, urging Ban to exploit the moment to convey his unhappiness with Iran’s behaviour.
“We think that Iran is going to try to use the event for propaganda purposes and to try to cover up the extreme isolation Iran is feeling politically and economically,” said Tommy Vietor, the spokesman for the National Security Council. “That said, if people choose to participate, we believe they should take the opportunity of any meetings that they have with Iran’s leaders to press them to comply with their international obligations without further delay.”