WASHINGTON: The United States called Monday on Iran to end its "hateful rhetoric" after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's attacks on Israel but said it still wanted talks with Tehran to mend relations. President Barack Obama "disagrees vehemently" with Ahmadinejad, who branded Israel a racist state, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters. He said it vindicated the decision by the country's first African-American president to shun the UN conference on racism in Geneva. "This is hateful rhetoric. It's, I think, one of the reasons why you saw the administration and the president determined that its participation in this conference was not a wise thing to do," he said. But Gibbs added, "We continue to evaluate our policy and understand that from a larger foreign policy framework, doing things the same old way is not likely to bring about the change we need in our foreign policy." State Department spokesman Robert Wood said Ahmadinejad's "rhetoric is unhelpful, it's counterproductive and it just feeds racial hatred." "We want to have a direct dialogue with Iran, but Iran needs to do a number of things to get back in the overall good graces of the international community," Wood told reporters.
BEIRUT: Thousands of people converged Saturday on central Beirut to mark the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Lebanese former premier Rafiq Hariri.Waving Lebanese flags and carrying pictures of the slain leader, men, women and children gathered under sunny skies in Martyr's Square where members of the parliamentary majority were to address the crowd. The rally comes as final preparations are underway in The Hague for the launch of the international tribunal set up to bring Hariri's killers to justice. It also comes as the country prepares for legislative elections in June that will pit Western-backed political parties against a Hezbollah-led alliance backed by Syria and Iran.Hariri died in a massive car bombing on February 14, 2005 that also killed 22 others. The assassination was widely blamed on then Lebanese power-broker Syria, which has denied any involvement. The attack on the Beirut seafront was one of the worst acts of political violence to rock Lebanon since t...
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