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| By Associated Press October 28, 2006 |
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Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Friday compared Iran's nuclear ambitions and threats against Israel with the policies of Nazi Germany during a ceremony at Israel's national Holocaust memorial.
Olmert's speech came amid a new report that Iran has doubled its capability to enrich uranium -- a process that can produce material for nuclear power reactors or weapons.
Israel has identified Iran as the greatest threat to the Jewish state. Israel's concerns have heightened since the election of Iran's hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who frequently calls for the destruction of Israel and has questioned whether the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews took place.
"The learning of the Holocaust is not a learning of remote history of what happened to the Jewish people," Olmert said in his speech at the Yad Vashem memorial. "On these very days we hear echoes of those very voices that started to spread across the world in the 1930s."
In Tehran, a semiofficial news agency said Iran has expanded its controversial nuclear program by injecting gas into a second network of centrifuges and successfully enriching uranium.
The report emerged as world powers are working on a draft resolution in the U.N. Security Council to impose limited sanctions on Iran because of its refusal to cease enrichment. Israel and the United States believe Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. Tehran says its nuclear program is peaceful.
Olmert said Iran's nuclear program is designed to secure "conventional weapons with delivery systems" to annihilate Israel. He also criticized world leaders for maintaining relations with the Iranian leader.
"It is the first time that a leader of a very big and important nation openly and publicly declares that an aim of his nation is to wipe off the map ... a country which is a member of the United Nations," Olmert said. "And this nation continues to be a legitimate member of the United Nations and leaders of many of the countries in the world receive the leader. They hardly do anything."
Olmert spoke at a reception celebrating a $25 million donation to Yad Vashem by American casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. It is the largest gift the memorial has ever received from a private donor.
Adelson, chairman and chief executive of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., has an estimated net worth of more than $20 billion, making him the third-wealthiest American after Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
Israeli dignitaries and Nobel peace laureate Elie Wiesel were in attendance.
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