Ahmadinejad says Bush Should Face 'People's Tribunal'

Yahoo News:

Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad labelled George W. Bush a warmonger who should be dragged before a "people's tribunal", the day after the US president called for a "free and democratic Iran". "God willing, in the near future we will judge you in a people's tribunal," Ahmadinejad said in a speech carried live on state television.

"You who support the Zionist puppet regime, you who support the destruction of Palestinian homes, you have no right to talk about liberty or human rights," Ahmadinejad said in comments directed at the US president.

In his State of the Union address Tuesday, Bush called the Islamic republic "a nation now held hostage by a small clerical elite that is isolating and repressing its people".

But responding to Bush's speech, Ahmadinejad lashed out at "those who are up to their elbows in the blood of the people, who are implicated everywhere where there is war and oppression, who start wars in Asia and Africa, killing people by the million." READ MORE

The Iranian president also vowed Wednesday his country would not surrender its nuclear ambitions and blasted an agreement between the five permanent members of the UN Security Council to take up the case.

"Those who possess stocks of nuclear arms meet together and take decisions and think that the Iranian people will submit to their decisions," the president said in a speech carried live on state television.

"I tell these countries who want to violate the rights of the Iranian people that the Iranian people will not be influenced by their propaganda," he said, vowing the Islamic republic would "continue on the road to victory".

The foreign ministers of the five permanent Security Council members agreed in London overnight Monday to haul Iran's case to New York after the country resumed sensitive nuclear fuel research work and deepened fears it could acquire the atom bomb.

A referral is likely to come during an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) 35-nation board of governors, which begins on Thursday.

"They believe they are dealing with a second-rate people with no culture. But we will build nuclear power stations everywhere in the country with a capacity of 20,000 megawatts," Ahmadinejad asserted.

"Our people will not bow to a few tyrannical countries who think they are the whole world," he added.

"The language of the Europeans and the West is from the Middle Ages. They live in a colonial dream. The action of the Westerners will have no influence on the decisions of the Iranian people," said the president, who was speaking during a visit to the southern city of Bushehr.

Bushehr is where, with Russian assistance, Iran is building its first nuclear power station. The Islamic regime insists it only wants to generate electricity.