An interpreter’s error has raised hackles in the United Nations and throughout the Middle East.
The United Nations said Wednesday that an interpreter misquoted a Syrian diplomat as saying that Israel had bombed a nuclear facility in his country.
Reuters reported that according to the transcript of a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly’s Disarmament Committee, Syrian U.N. Ambassador Bashar al-Jaafari – speaking in Arabic with simultaneous English translation –said that Israel “violates the airspace of sovereign states and carries out military aggression against them, like what happened on the 6th of September 2007 against my country.”
The translator quoted the diplomat as saying that Israel had “taken action against nuclear facilities, including the 6 July attack in Syria.”
The error made headlines throughout the Middle East.
