Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on the US to choose between Israel and Iran on Tuesday night, according to Iranian state media. Speaking in Istanbul at the 25th Session of the Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation (COMCEC) of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Iranian president said that it was up to US President Barack Obama to illustrate his motto of "Change."
"The support of both Israel and Iran can't go hand in hand," he was quoted as saying by IRNA. "No change is made unless great choices are made."
"We would welcome the changes, and wait for big and correct decisions to be made… We will clasp any hand that is extended sincerely toward us, but changes should be made in practice."
Addressing the same conference a day earlier, Ahmadinejad said that capitalist excesses caused the global economic meltdown and are un-Islamic, as leaders at a Muslim forum touted their religion's banking system a way to revive battered economies.
He also slammed investments that pay interest, deemed usury by Muslims, and said they had contributed to financial and social problems such as homelessness.
"Usury, which is entrenched in the capitalist system, is perhaps the main reason why the system has gone bankrupt," Ahmadinejad said. "It is a way of accumulating capital without working. Usury, according to the Koran, is fighting with Allah."
Ahmadinejad did not mention Iran's struggling economy, nor did he refer to its dispute with the West over its nuclear activities.
The Islamic forum held its meeting in a plush hotel on the banks of the Bosporus Strait that divides
Istanbul between the Asian and European continents. Syrian President Bashar Assad and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan were also in attendance.
Source: JPost
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