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Vienna: Israel accused Iran of lying while Tehran challenged the international community to send inspectors for a probe of its archrival's nuclear capabilities, in an unusually bitter and rare direct confrontation yesterday.
UN officials at a 148-nation meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency said they had no memory of the two hostile nations ever engaging each other directly at previous meetings and noted that development - and the unusually harsh tone of their statements - in part reflected Middle East tensions.
Iranian delegate Ail Asghar Soltanieh - like Arab delegates before him - said that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had acknowledged last year that his country possessed nuclear weapons - something Olmert says he never did.
Soltanieh also criticised "the continuous silence of the US ... vis a vis the atrocities, aggression, bloodshed and violations of over 30 resolutions of the United Nations."
That, he said, is "shameful and [a] dark point in the history of the United Nations, and the IAEA and the modern century at large."
In turn, Israeli delegate Israel Michaeli alluded to claims that Olmert acknowledged Israel's nuclear weapons, saying, some previous speakers "continued to lie." "Those who call for the elimination of Israel" have no right to criticise "Israeli policies aimed at defending Israel's very existence," Michaeli said.
Soltanieh, in response, challenged the IAEA to send its inspectors into the country "to verify who is telling the truth."
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