U.S. Blasts Farrakhan’s Remarks in Baghdad
The State Department took strong exception Friday to statements in Baghdad by black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan that Washington’s “wicked” policy was leading to “mass murder” of the Iraqi people.
On Thursday, the Nation of Islam leader denounced U.N. sanctions against Iraq as a “crime against humanity” and likened them to the horrors Jews endured in Nazi concentration camps.
State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns called Farrakhan’s statements “shameful.”
Burns, who Wednesday accused Farrakhan of “cavorting with dictators” during visits to Libya and Iran, said it was Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein who had “unleashed the miseries upon the Iraqi people” by starting the 1991 Gulf War.
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