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Khatami Calls for Identifying Root Causes of Terrorism
Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said Wednesday in Tehran that fighting terrorism without identifying its root causes can not succeed, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Khatami made the remarks while delivering a speech to hundreds of academics and university students to mark start of the academic year.
The president said that the root cause of terrorism "is that ethics has been kept away from politics."
Khatami branded his U.S. counterpart George W. Bush "arrogant" for allegedly thinking that he can "distinguish between good and bad on his own," referring to Bush's recent remarks that "the countries are either with the U.S. or with terrorism" while trying to build a global anti-terrorism coalition.
"A powerful human being can become so arrogant that he thinks he can distinguish between good and bad on his own," Khatami criticized.
"I think that the (U.S.) president has made a mistake because such a mentality belongs to the past century," Khatami said, adding that there are countries that have suffered from both the U.S. policies and the terrorism.
The Iranian leader also called on the international community to lobby for dialogue instead of clash among civilizations.
Three hijacked passenger planes slammed into the Pentagon in Washington and New York's World Trade Center on September 11, killing thousands of people.
Iran, which has not had diplomatic relations with the U.S. for the past 21 years, has condemned the terror attacks in the U.S., while warning against possible U.S. reprisals against its neighbor Afghanistan.
The Afghan ruling Taliban regime was accused by the U.S. of harboring Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the anti-U.S. attacks.
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