Fmr. Israeli Prime Minister: "Ahmadinejad Represents Satan"

Peres: 'Ahmadinejad represents Satan'
Former Israeli leader also compares Iranian president to Hussein

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/...ran/index.html

Saturday, April 15, 2006; Posted: 5:18 p.m. EDT (21:18 GMT)

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres responded to veiled threats made by Iran's president against Israel, saying Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "will end up in the same way as [Saddam] Hussein."

"Ahmadinejad represents Satan, not God," said Peres, who shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize with the late Palestinian and Israeli leaders, Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin.

"History knew how to denounce madmen and those who wave their sword, and all those who acted this way ended their careers accordingly," Peres added.

Speaking Saturday on Israel Radio, Peres said the Iranian president's statements reminded him of those by Hussein, the deposed Iraqi leader on trial for war crimes charges.

"Iran is a United Nations member state threatening another U.N. member state, and the international organization will not let this go unheeded," Peres said.

On Friday, Ahmadinejad called Israel a threat to Islamic nations, saying, "The Zionist regime is a dying tree, and soon its branches will be broken down." He was speaking in Tehran to representatives from various Middle Eastern and African governments at a conference "on Jerusalem and support for the rights of the Palestinian people." (Full story)

In October he said that Israel "must be wiped off the map" and in December called the Holocaust a "myth." The U.N. General Assembly in November passed a resolution condemning such comments and rejecting "any denial of the Holocaust as a historical event, either in full or in part."

On Friday, Ahmadinejad once again questioned whether the killing of 6 million Jews during World War II really happened, calling it a story "many countries believe" and one that Israel uses to build support. (Watch Ahmadinejad deliver his explosive remarks about Israel -- 1:53)

Peres, a leading figure in Israel's ruling Kadima Party, previously has called Iran "the greatest danger" to the world and urged the international community to stop the Islamic republic from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

"The Iranian president is uniting the entire world against him," Peres said Friday. "Israel is following his statements and actions closely, but does not wish to respond to them."

Ahmadinejad's comments came days after he declared Iran a nuclear power after Iranian researchers announced they had enriched uranium.