Wiesenthal Center Protests Visit of Iranian Foreign Minister to Vienna This Coming Sunday

April 22, 2010

Jerusalem-The Simon Wiesenthal Center today issued a strong protest to the Austrian authorities against the impending visit this coming Sunday, April 25, of Iranian Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki to Vienna, where he will be hosted by his Austrian counterpart Michael Spindelegger.

In a letter of protest sent by the Center’s Israel director, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, to the Austrian ambassador to Israel Michael Rendi, the Center expressed its anger and dismay at the welcome to be accorded by the Austrian authorities to Mouttaki.

According to Zuroff:
“It is incomprehensible to me how Austria can warmly welcome one of the most senior officials of a regime which openly calls for Israel’s destruction, organizes conferences on Holocaust denial, and consistently abuses human rights on a horrific scale.

“The only reason that Teheran has been able to continue its nuclear program, its threats to destroy Israel, and total disregard for human rights is because of the failure of the world’s democracies to apply stringent sanctions against the fanatic Iranian regime. The fact that an anti-Semite like Mottaki will be a welcome guest in Vienna constitutes an abysmal moral failure with potentially-genocidal implications, which raises the painful question of what, if anything , Austria has learned from its Holocaust past.”



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