Ahmadinejad calls for U.S. leaders to be 'buried'

Haaretz.com

Iran President makes remarks in response to threats of military attacks against Iran's nuclear facilities.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday called for U.S. leaders to be buried in response to threats of military attack over Tehran's nuclear program.

"May the undertaker bury you, your table and your body, which has soiled the world," he said using language in Iran reserved for hated enemies.

Several top U.S. officials including Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff have said in recent months that the military option remains on the table and there is a plan to attack Iran, although a military strike has been described as a bad idea.

The crowd of military men and clerics in the town of Hashtgerd just west of the capital chuckled at the president's insult and applauded.

The speech was broadcast by both state television and the official English-language Press TV, but the latter glossed over the insult in the simultaneous translation.

Ahmadinejad's remarks come in sharp contrast to ones he made to Al-Jazeera Arabic news channel in August in which he offered the U.S. Iran's friendship.

In Sunday's speech, the hard-line president again questioned who was behind the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 in the U.S. and said they gave Washington a pretext for seeking to dominate the region and plunder its oil wealth.

He said there were still "100 questions unanswered" about the attacks. "The U.S. must answer them. If they really presented reliable documents, we would even help them to arrest the elements behind the attack," he said.

"We cannot allow the September 11 incident to be used as a pretext to attack this region and shed the blood of innocent people, therefore all dimensions of the incident should be clarified," Ahmadinejad said.

Referring to the Holocaust, Ahmadinejad said Sunday that "based on a faked and false pretext, they have put a wild dog (Israel) in the region to loot the nations."

The Iranian leader recently returned from a visit to the U.S. to attend the United Nations General Assembly.

While in New York, he said most of the world's people believe the U.S. was behind September 11 attacks, drawing a strong rebuke from U.S. President Barack Obama.