Iran President: Israel should be 'wiped off the map'

Iran's hardliner President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today openly called for Israel to be "wiped off the map".

"The establishment of the Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world," he told a conference in Tehran entitled 'the world without Zionism'.

"The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of a war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land," he said.

"As the Imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map," said Ahmadinejad, referring to Iran's revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

His comments were the first time in years that such a high-ranking Iranian official has allied for Israel's eradication, even though such slogans are still regularly used at regime rallies.

Addressing some 4,000 students gathered in an Interior Ministry Conference Hall, Ahmadinejad also called for Palestinian unity, resistance and a point "where the annihilation of the Zionist regime will come".

"The Islamic Umma (community) will not allow its historic enemy to live in its heartland," he said in the fiery speech that centered on an "historic war between the oppressor and the world of Islam". The term "oppressor" is used by the clerical regime to refer to the United States.

"We should not settle for a piece of land," he said of Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip. "Anyone who signs a treaty which recognizes the entity of Israel means he has signed the surrender of the Muslim world."