Yemeni president: ''Sharon is world's no. 1 terrorist''
The assassination of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, the leader of Palestinian Hamas movement was a "clear defiance against the Arabs and Muslims not just Palestinians," Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh said Tuesday.
Addressing a mass protest against the killing of Yassin, President Saleh said that "After the Beirut (Arab) summit Sharon blockaded Arafat in Ramallah, then he killed Ahmad Yassin before the Tunis summit."
"The Palestinians have suffered from the Zionist terrorism because of the absence of the Arab solidarity."
According to SABA, President Saleh noted that "even after Sheikh Yassin was murdered, there are still thousands of freedom fighters among Palestinians."
"This act is a message to the Arab and Muslim nations and the second message from the Zionist entity is to be sent via Arafat (killing)."
"When the Arabs would wake up and realize that this is a challenge for the Arab peoples," Saleh asked.
He called the Palestinian groups to join their powers "to face this Zionist terrorism."
Saleh also slammed the recent initiatives about reforms in the region, dubbing them as "Zionist conspiracies" against the Arab and Islamic nations.
"The foreign pressures on the Arabs to make political, social and economic reforms would not make any change because of the fact that these reforms should come form the Arabs themselves not from outside," the Yemeni leader conveyed. "We do not accept any foreign pressures," he added.
President Saleh also called the U.N. to impose sanctions on Israel and to "prosecute Sharon before the International Criminal Court as a war criminal and terrorist." "He (Sharon) is the world's No. 1 terrorist. There is no terrorist like Sharon's, who is killing the innocent women and children in Palestine."
