BRUSSELS: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s suggestion that the US government was involved in the September 11 attacks was "outrageous and unacceptable," the European Union said on Friday.
EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton said that Ahmadinejad’s assertions at the United Nations general assembly on Thursday "that the United States was in any way responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks or that the majority of people in the US believe this to be the case, is outrageous and unacceptable." "It is for this reason that all representatives of the 27 nations of the EU walked out," she underlined, after Europe joined a US-led Western walkout in Manhatten.
The Iranian president said there was a theory that "some segments within the US government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East, in order also to save the Zionist regime."
Al-Qaeda hijackers flew airliners into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania in the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people nine years ago, the deadliest ever on US soil.
US President Barack Obama "found the comments to be outrageous and offensive, particularly given how close we are to Ground Zero," an official there said on condition of anonymity.
