Tehran, June 26: Accusing the United States of launching propaganda against it, Iran has said Washington is trying to divert world's attention from its failure to find Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction by making an issue out of a report by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the country's nuclear programmes. "While Europe is calling on the US to prove its claims regarding Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction, the US is trying to refrain from responding, to kill time, and to mislead the world public opinion in that connection," Iranian defence minister Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani said here yesterday.
The US must respond to the world public opinion for this, because it waged a large scale war in the region under the pretext that Iraq possessed such weapons, he told.
Shamkhani said the recent IAEA meeting showed that the international community does not agree with the US claims.
He further charged the US with trying to mislead the Iraqi public opinion by accusing Iran of interfering in the internal affairs of the war-torn country.
"This is because Washington is seeking to establish a government in Iraq that favours the US and the Zionist regime so as to humiliate Arabs and Muslims," he said.
"These charges will never undermine the cordial relations between the Iraqis and the Iranians who sheltered them at difficult times, and neither will decrease the sensibility of the Iraqi people toward the issue of Palestine," the Defence Minister said. Bureau Report