Iran condemned for anti-Israel remarks
London Leaders around the world on Thursday condemned a call by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Israel be “wiped off the map,” as a top Iranian official said that mass demonstrations in his country today would rebuff the rising criticism from abroad.
“I have never come across a situation of the president of a country saying they want to … wipe out another country,” said a visibly agitated British Prime Minister Tony Blair, at the end of a summit of the 25 leaders of the European Union’s member states held outside London.
Blair said Ahmadinejad’s comment was “completely and totally unacceptable.”
In a joint statement, the E.U. leaders “condemned in the strongest terms” the Iranian president’s call, saying it “will cause concern about Iran’s role in the region and its future intentions.” France’s President Jacques Chirac told reporters that Ahmadinejad risked Iran “being left on the outside of other nations.”
The statement was widely reported in the Arab world; leaders there were for the most part silent on it.
Japan agrees to base nuclear-powered carrier
United States and Japanese officials have agreed to allow the Navy to station a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in Japan for the first time, the Navy announced Thursday.
Though American troops have been based in Japan since the end of World War II, the Japanese public has long been wary of a U.S. nuclear presence because of concerns about possible radiation leaks. The decision comes 60 years after the United States brought the war to an end by dropping atomic bombs on a pair of Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“The security environment in the Western Pacific region increasingly requires that the U.S. Navy station the most capable ships forward,” the Navy said in a statement.
Nuclear-powered warships have visited Japanese ports more than 1,200 times since 1964. The Navy said the United States has provided firm commitments to the government of Japan regarding the safe use of Japanese ports by the nuclear powered warships, and it pledged to observe strictly all safety precautions and procedures.
Brazilians demonstrate their beef is safe
Sao Paulo, Brazil Thousands of Brazilians took to the streets Thursday to try to show the rest of the world that Brazilian beef is safe – by roasting and eating 22,000 pounds of it.
More than 40 countries have banned Brazilian beef following the country’s latest outbreak of the highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease earlier this month in the midwestern state of Mato Grosso do Sul.
To protest the ban, about 6,000 people gathered for the giant barbecue on a closed-off street in front of the Sao Paulo headquarters of Forca Sindical, Brazil’s second-largest organization representing unionized workers.
The group said it hoped the barbecue would call attention to the plight of workers in meatpacking plants who may lose their jobs because of the ban.
Brazil has the world’s largest commercial cattle herd, estimated at 190 million head, and is the world’s leading beef exporter by volume. Exports this year had been expected to bring in at least $3 billion before the ban.