Protests, walkout mar Ahmadinejad speech

GENEVA, Switzerland, April 20 (UPI) -- Protests and a walkout by delegates disrupted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as he delivered remarks Monday at a U.N. anti-racism summit in Switzerland.

The presence of Ahmadinejad at the Geneva conference already prompted several countries, including the United States, Israel, Canada and Germany, to boycott the first U.N. gathering on discrimination and racism in eight years.

Delegates left as Ahmadinejad accused Israel and the West of making "an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering ... in order to establish a totally racist government," CNN reported.

Zionism "personifies racism," the Iranian leader said, also accusing Zionists of using economic and political resources to stifle opponents.

Ahmadinejad has said Israel should be destroyed and called the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were killed, is a myth. In 2006, Iran held a conference raising questions about the Holocaust.

Protesters interrupted Ahmadinejad as he began to speak, shouting: "You're a racist." Security officers removed at least two protesters from the chamber, CNN said.

In addition to the multinational boycott, Israel recalled its ambassador to Switzerland to protest a meeting between Switzerland's president and Ahmadinejad, Israel's foreign ministry said in a statement.

The boycott was prompted by concerns that the conference could become a repeat of the first world summit in 2001, which critics said was a springboard to denounce Israel, The New York Times reported. Countries said they would stay away from the Geneva summit because of the meeting's draft document, which initially contained references about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, the defamation of religion and compensation for slavery. That language eventually was removed, but some of the sentiments from the 2001 summit remained, officials told the Times.