Former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami on Friday condemned the
September 11 attacks against the United States as an atrocity and said
suicide bombers did Islam an injustice and would not go to heaven.
Three days before the fifth anniversary of the attacks that killed
nearly 3,000 people, the Shi'ite cleric urged Muslims to work against
"Islamaphobia," which he said had grown since Islamic militants flew
hijacked aircraft into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a
Pennsylvania field.
Two crimes were committed on September 11 -- civilians were killed and
it was done in the name of Islam, Khatami told the Council on
American-Islamic Relations, a human rights group.
"We Muslims should condemn these atrocities even more strongly," he
said.
"Terrorist, which means killing of civilians, is a human being that
lacks morality ... (and) will not go to heaven" and those who do it in
the name of Islam "are lying," he said.
Nearing the end of a five-city U.S. visit in which he largely stressed
themes of dialogue and co-existence, Khatami continued to stir
controversy.
A U.S.-based pro-Israel group, the Israel Project, complained in a
press release that the president from 1997 to 2005 was "working to
white-wash Iran's record of nuclear developments, support for terror
and human rights violations."
In a Time magazine interview, Khatami regretted the 1979 U.S. hostage
crisis and acknowledged the Holocaust of 6 million Jews as "historical
fact."
"I believe the Holocaust is the crime of Nazism. But it is possible
that the Holocaust, which is an absolute fact, a historical fact, would
be misused. The Holocaust should not be, in any way, an excuse for the
suppression of Palestinian rights," he said.
Considered a reformist during his presidency, Khatami was largely
stymied by powerful conservative clerics. His hard-line successor,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has reinstated conservative domestic policies,
while threatening to destroy Israel and denying the Holocaust.
As for the 1979 hostage crisis, when student radicals seized the U.S.
Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans for 444 days, Khatami said, "I
regret the hostage crisis ... and I sympathize with the hostages and
their families for their loss and their hurt but this was (also) a
revolutionary reaction to half a century of the U.S. taking Iran
hostage."
Khatami is the most prominent Iranian to visit the United States,
outside of the United Nations' New York headquarters, in decades.
Ahmadinejad spoke at the U.N. General Assembly last year and has
requested a visa to do so again this year.
Khatami's U.S. visit has been controversial in light of U.S.
accusations Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, sponsors terrorism and
arms Hizbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.
At a news conference on Thursday, Khatami warned the United States
against threatening Iran. While urging a dialogue among civilizations,
he said there was too much mistrust for Washington and Tehran to talk
now.
Khatami told Time he got "really upset" with President George W. Bush's
designation of Iran as part of an "axis of evil" and he praised America
as a "great and big country."
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