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Invoke the Genocide Convention Against Iran

[Jerusalem Post] Irwin Cotler - Dec. 9 marks the 60th anniversary of the Genocide Convention, proclaimed in the wake of the Holocaust. It is in Ahmadinejad's Iran where one finds the toxic convergence of the advocacy of the most horrific of crimes embedded in the most virulent of hatreds. It is dramatized by the parading in the streets of Tehran of a Shihab-3 missile draped in the words "Israel must be wiped off the map" and underpinned by the words of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that "[t]here is only one solution to the Middle East problem, namely the annihilation and destruction of the Jewish state." Iran has already committed the crime of incitement prohibited under the Genocide Convention. The Genocide Convention authorizes a panoply of international legal remedies which Israel could invoke or support others in invoking in response to Iran. An application to hold Iran to account should be submitted to the UN Security Council pursuant to Article 8 of the Genocide Convention; an inter-state complaint can be launched against Iran before the International Court of Justice; and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon should be asked to refer the danger of a genocidal and nuclear Iran to the Security Council as a threat to international peace and security. The legal remedies to counter state-sanctioned incitement exist. Calling Ahmadinejad's Iran to account - and directly linking its nuclear ambitions to its genocidal incitements - is a responsibility, one envisaged by the Genocide Convention 60 years ago. The writer is the former minister of justice and attorney-general of Canada and is a Canadian member of parliament.
2008-12-08 01:00:00
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