Romney Calls On U.N. to Bar Iranian President

By Michael Luo

Mitt Romney, a Republican presidential candidate, is sending a letter to the United Nations Secretary General tomorrow, calling for him to bar Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from addressing the General Assembly next week and instead hand him an indictment under the Genocide Convention.

Mr. Ahmadinejad is scheduled to give a speech at the 62nd annual meeting of the General Assembly, which begins Tuesday in New York. It will be his third visit to the United States, where he is expected to spend two days, before he departs for Venezuela to meet with President Hugo Chavez.

An array of Jewish leaders, political leaders and others, including John Bolton, the former United States ambassador to the United Nations and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, gathered last year to call for the United Nations’ International Court of Justice to indict Mr. Ahmadinejad for incitement of genocide. They base their argument on his calls for the destruction of Israel.

The specific statute the officials cite falls under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which includes under its list of prohibitions, incitement to commit genocide.

In President Bush’s nationally televised speech last week on Iraq, he stressed the need to contain Iran as one of the reasons to continue a robust American presence in Iraq. In an interview about his views about Iraq last week, Mr. Romney also highlighted the influence of Iran in the region as a major source of concern.