Israel will be annihilated, vows Iran's president

IRAN'S President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad yesterday said Israel was a "rotten, dried tree" that will be annihilated by "one storm".

Opening a conference supporting the Palestinians, Mr Ahmadinejad fired a series of verbal shots at Israel, saying it was a "permanent threat" to the Middle East that will "soon" be liberated and questioned the validity of the Nazi Holocaust against Jews in World War II. "Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation," Mr Ahmadinejad said.

"The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm," he said.

The president provoked a world outcry last October when he said Israel should be "wiped off the map".

Yesterday, he repeated his previous line on the Holocaust, saying: "If such a disaster is true, why should the people of this region pay the price? Why does the Palestinian nation have to be suppressed and have its land occupied?"

The land of Palestine, he said, referring to the British mandated territory that includes all of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, "will be freed soon".

He did not say how this would be achieved, but insisted to the audience of at least 900 people: "Believe that Palestine will be freed soon".

"The existence of this [Israeli] regime is a permanent threat" to the Middle East, he added. "Its existence has harmed the dignity of Islamic nations."

The president spoke days after two Israeli generals spoke of the military potential of Iran's nuclear programme.

The chief of Israeli military intelligence, Major General Amos Yadlin, was quoted on Wednesday as saying Iran could develop a nuclear bomb "within three years, by the end of the decade".

The day before, Mr Ahmadinejad had announced that Iran had successfully enriched uranium using a battery of 164 centrifuges, a significant step towards the large-scale production of enriched uranium required for either fuelling nuclear reactors or making nuclear bombs.

The US, France and Israel accuse Iran of using a civilian nuclear programme to secretly build an atomic bomb. Iran denies this, saying its programme is confined to generating electricity. The United Nations Security Council has given Iran until April 28 to cease enrichment. But Iran has rejected the demand.

The three-day conference on Palestine is being attended by officials of Hamas, the ruling party in the Palestinian territories.

Iran has previously said it will give money to the Palestinian Authority to make up for the withdrawal of donations by Western nations who object to Hamas's refusal to recognise Israel and renounce violence. But no figure has been published.