Munich: Iran poses a threat to Israel as well as to democratic states in the West, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany warned Friday.

The dimension of threat posed to Jews and the entire free world was being underestimated, Charlotte Knobloch said at a reception marking the Jewish New Year's festival Rosh Hashanah.

"Atom bombs in the hands of the rulers in Tehran pose a threat to all democratic states," she said, referring to Iran's controversial nuclear programme.

The United Nations has imposed sanctions on Iran for refusing to cease uranium enrichment, a process some states fear is geared towards a bomb, but which Tehran says is needed to generate electricity from nuclear power.

Tensions between Iran and Israel reached a peak in 2005 when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad questioned the legality of the Jewish state and called for its relocation to Europe or North America and the return of Israelis to their lands of origin.

In his speech Tuesday at the UN General Assembly, Ahmadinejad said the "Zionist regime (Israel) was on a definite slope to collapse."

 

Source : ians