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Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Iranians' anger at Ahmadinejad over Brazilian snubs

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is facing domestic political embarrassment after enduring a series of damaging snubs on a visit to Brazil, Iran’s erstwhile close ally.
Iranians anger at Ahmadinejad at Brazilian snubs
Amid a clamour of media ridicule, one Iranian MP has criticised Mr Ahmadinejad for failing to abandon the trip when he saw that he – and by extension, Iran – was being treated disrespectfully.  
Having prided himself in fostering close ties with Latin American leaders, Mr Ahmadinejad found himself conspicuously frozen out at last week’s UN Rio + 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro, with none of his fellow leaders deigning to meet him.
Amid a clamour of media ridicule, one Iranian MP has criticised Mr Ahmadinejad for failing to abandon the trip when he saw that he – and by extension, Iran – was being treated disrespectfully.
The Iranian leader’s torment began on arrival at Rio’s international airport when he discovered that no senior officials from the host country had come to greet him. Instead, he was met by the head of Iran’s state environment body, Mohammad Javad Mohammadi-Zadeh, who had flown from Tehran earlier to attend the international gathering.
Mr Ahmadinejad’s humiliation was compounded when his Brazilian counterpart, Dilma Rousseff, declined his request for a face-to-face meeting. A reception with the mayor of Rio at which Mr Ahmadinejad was to unveil a gift of ornate pillars based on those at Persepolis – the historic seat of ancient Persian monarchs – was cancelled.
Perhaps most galling of all has been the mocking response to a picture of the president, taken as he is about to depart from Rio, that seems to emphasize his diminutive physical stature as he poses in the presence of heavily-armed, burly Brazilian bodyguards.
"The way the president was dealt with was demeaning,” Avaz Heydarpour, a member of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, told the semi-official Mehr news agency. “When on arriving at the airport, he saw that the status of the Islamic Republic and the presidency was not observed, he should not have continued the trip.”
It is a far cry from a previous visit to Brazil in 2009, when Mr Ahmadinejad was feted by the country’s then president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – the only senior figure to meet him last week – despite loud protests from local Jewish groups, angry at his denials of the holocaust and frequent forecasts of Israel’s demise.
However, since taking power in 2010, Mrs Rousseff has distanced herself from Iran, a policy that has drawn criticism from Mr Ahmadinejad’s aides. The once-close ties between the two countries were further strained in April when an Iranian diplomat – who was subsequently recalled and fired – was accused of groping girls in a mixed swimming pool in the Brazilian capital, Brasilia.

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