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'We don't accept US dominance'
20/11/2006 19:26 - (SA)
Tehran - Iran and Zimbabwe vowed on Monday to strengthen ties and press ahead with resistance to the United States, which has vilified the governments in Tehran and Harare as "outposts of tyranny."
"We do not accept US and British dominance in the world. We will co-operate to put an end to domination," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, welcoming Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe at the start of a four-day visit to Iran.
"We find ourselves against countries like the Unites States, which think the world belongs to them exclusively ... we have to put out defence," Mugabe said.
Zimbabwe and Iran have a common enemy in US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has branded Belarus, Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea and Zimbabwe as "outposts of tyranny."
"Iran and Zimbabwe think alike and have been described (as belonging) to the 'axis of evil', who are they to judge us?" Mugabe said, in reference to US President George W Bush's remarks on Iran, North Korea and Iraq after the September 11 attacks on the United States.
"Those countries that think alike should come together," Mugabe added.
Iran is one of the countries Mugabe has been warming to as part of his government's "Look East" policy, partly forced by Zimbabwe's isolation from the West over controversial land reforms and allegedly fraud-marred elections in 2000 and 2002.
The United States' frosty relations with Iran have soured further over Tehran's nuclear programme. Washington claims the Islamic republic's uranium enrichment programme is ultimately aimed at producing fissile material for nuclear weapons.
Iran insists it will use the enriched uranium only to fuel nuclear power stations, something it is permitted to do as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
- AFP
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