US President George W. Bush blasted the UN Human Rights Council for singling out Israel while ignoring major human rights violators, in his speech at the opening of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday. Bush said that for the United States to be credible in standing up for human rights, "the UN must reform its own human rights council." The UN was "silent on repression" in places like Caracas and Teheran while it focused its criticism "excessively on Israel," he said.
Bush also mentioned Israel in his reaffirmation of a two-state solution and call for the international community to help by backing Palestinian moderates. "The international community must support these leaders," he said.
"In Belarus, North Korea, Syria and Iran, brutal regimes deny their people the fundamental rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration," Bush said, but otherwise avoided focusing attention on Teheran in his speech.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, however, devoted more attention to the Iranian threat and warned against the Islamic Republic gaining nuclear weapons. "Weakness and renunciation do not lead to peace. They lead to war," Sarkozy declared. "There will not be peace in the world if the international community falters in the face of the proliferation of nuclear arms." The Iranian crisis "will only be resolved if firmness and dialogue go hand-in-hand."