Yuli Edelstein tells global conference cooperation on environmental issues would lay foundations for peace; Iran walks out on speech
Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstain called on Israel’s Arab neighbors Monday to visit the Knesset and discuss environmental cooperation “people to people,” urging leaders not to wait for peace agreements but rather to build up confidence from the ground up.
“Meet with me. Sit with me. Walk to me,” Edelstein said at UN Headquarters, at the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s World Conference of Speakers of Parliament.
Edelstein said the foundations for future peace between the nations of the Middle East could be laid through cooperation on issues of water, clean air and prosperity which cross national borders.
Iran’s Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani reportedly left the hall in protest when Edelstein came up to speak.
Speaking earlier, Larijani said he supported the historic nuclear deal with world powers aimed at reining in Tehran’s alleged efforts to build a bomb.
Larijani reiterated that his country’s nuclear program is peaceful and said in the negotiations “Iran once again showed that bullying doesn’t work anymore.”
The Iranian people’s “perseverance and ultimately their resistance became victorious over sanctions and intimidation and the difficult and intensive nuclear talks led to an agreement which is of course supported by us,” he told the conference.
Larijani was also critical of “warmongering under the pretext of expanding democracy,” saying this led to several wars against “the oppressed people of Palestine and the military atrocities of the Zionist regime.”
Taking aim at the United States and its allies without naming any country, Larijani was also critical of “governments that are trying to enforce democracy “with bombs and machine guns” that have led to “occupation and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or the war in Yemen and armed conflicts in Syria.”
As reported by The TImes of Israel