BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) – Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner accepted a request from Iran to have the foreign ministers of the two countries meet at the U.N. General Assembly despite the protestations of Jewish leaders.
Kirchner in her address to the General Assembly on Tuesday in New York said she had instructed her foreign minister, Hector Timmerman, to hold the meeting with his Iranian counterpart Ali Akbar Salehi at the assembly at an undisclosed time.
She addressed the 1994 attack on the AMIA Buenos Aires Jewish center that left 85 people dead; Iran is accused of directing the bombing that the Lebanon-based terror group Hezbollah is accused of carrying out.
“We received an Iranian request for a bilateral meeting. I asked the Argentinian foreign minister to attend this meeting at the United Nations as the Iranian Republic requested,” Kirchner said. “We expect proposals on how to move forward on this deep conflict that goes back to 1994.
“This president will not take any resolution without consulting the victims of the attack and political representations in the parliament. This type of decision cannot be made by one party, and every political party must speak up in public about this issue.”
Argentinian Jewish leaders had urged Timmerman, who is Jewish, not to meet with his Iranian counterpart.
In her speech to the assembly, Kirchner also condemned the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Libya and said there is a “need to recognize the Palestinian state and also the need for a secure Israeli state within the 1967 borders.”
