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Iranian president repeats insistence on WWII compensation

22 December 2009 11:57 (UTC +04:00)

Baku -APA. Iranâ€™s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in the city of Shiraz in southern Iran Tuesday morning to start his third tour of Fars province, IRNA reported.
He repeated in his address to people in the cityâ€™s biggest stadium that he will go ahead with demanding compensation for damages Iran sustained during World War II.
The Iranian president called on Monday for the establishment of a national commission to calculate the amount of compensation for damages Iran sustained during World War II under British and Russian occupiers.
In a letter to Head of the Presidential Office Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tasked him with what he described as "asserting the Iranian nation’s inalienable rights."
"We will seek compensation for World War II damages. I have assigned a team to calculate the costs,"" Tehran Times quoted Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying at a Friday press conference in the Danish capital.

"I will write a letter to the UN Secretary-General [Ban Ki-moon] asking for Iran to be compensated for the damages," he added, pointing out that such a move is necessary to ensure that justice was served.

Ahmadinejad told the reporters that the countries that won the Second World War had inflicted a lot of damage on Iran by invading the country and using its resources.

The president added that while the former Soviet Union, the United States and Britain received compensation after the conflict, Iran had been given nothing to make up for the suffering its people had endured.

"During this period, the Iranian people were subjected to a great deal of pressure and the country suffered a great deal of damages but Iran was not paid any compensation," Ahmadinejad explained.

At the start of World War II, Iran declared its neutrality, but the country was soon invaded by both Britain and the Soviet Union on August 26, 1941 in Operation Countenance.