Tel Aviv - Israel is pushing for countries to boycott Wednesday's address to the United Nations by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Israel has over the past days approached the foreign ministries of countries around the world in a bid to convince them to have their representatives leave the General Assembly hall when Ahmadinejad delivers his speech, Israeli officials said Tuesday.
Ahmadinejad, who sparked worldwide outrage and condemnation anew on Friday when he again denied the Holocaust, is due to make his address at 6 pm New York time (2200 GMT).
"The Holocaust is a false claim, a fairy tale, used as a pretext for crimes against humanity," he told an anti-Israel rally in Tehran last week.
Israel's UN ambassador, Gabriela Shalev, confirmed to Israel Radio Tuesday that her country's delegation, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would be absent from the hall during the Iranian leader's address in New York.
President Shimon Peres told students at an agricultural college in northern Israel that his Iranian counterpart was one of the most "terrible people in history, a man who denies the Holocaust, a man of dark words and a bearer of bad news, a man without a future."
Ahmadinejad's spokesman, Mohammad-Jafar Mohammadzadeh, was defiant, telling the official Iranian news agency IRNA Monday that "the Zionist lobby would do anything to prevent our president from disclosing the Iranian standpoint and distort the message of global justice, but the Zionists will once again fail."
Netanyahu, meanwhile, has already begun marketing his own speech to the General Assembly, due Thursday at 1 pm New York time (1700 GMT), meaning it can be aired live on Israeli television in prime time.
His office has promised an address that will be "dramatic," focusing mainly on Iran.
For Israel, stopping Iran from obtaining nuclear capabilities - which it regards as a severe security threat - has been a top priority.
Although Russian President Dimitry Medvedev told CNN last week that Peres had told him Israel does not intend any strike against Iran, Israel Defence Force chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi said Monday that all options regarding Iran were still on the table.
"We all understand that the best way of coping is through international sanctions ... I hope that Iran will understand this. I think that if not, Israel has the right to defend itself, and all options are open," Lieutenant General Ashkenazi said.
"The IDF's working premise is that we have to be prepared for that possibility, and that is exactly what we are doing," he added.
