Swiss President Hans-Rudolph Merz defended his get-together with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during last month’s Durban II racism-fest in Geneva on the grounds that he raised Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust-denial and threats against Israel during their meeting, and anyway, his is a neutral country maintaining diplomatic relations with Iran, even, since the Islamofascist revolution, representing U.S. interests in Tehran. Maybe so, and true enough, respectively. Of course, Switzerland’s rep for neutrality’s been just the teeny-tiniest bit tarnished over the last decade, with revelations of Swiss complicity in the vast Nazi theft of Holocaust victims’ treasures, and, possibly, worse. What’s more, it may not be all that easy to maintain neutrality toward a country with which you’re doing serious business. Reports the Jerusalem Post:
Now, the president of Switzerland must contend – one way or the other – with Ahmadinejad’s assertion that during their tête-à -tête he made some extremely disparaging remarks about the U.S. – in language suspiciously evocative of the argot of anti-Semitism. MEMRI’s translation:
Whether or not Monsieur Merz actually uttered those words is irrelevant. If he didn’t, if the neutral president’s been slandered by the Iranian dictator – a plausible enough idea – Merz’s reward for having appeared to be in Ahmadinejad’s pocket via the appeasing meeting will be to spend forever denying the slur. And if he did insult America – well then, Ã bas le salaud Suisse!
