0620 GMT: Summit Watch. More via Barbara Slavin from the conference hall, "Supreme leader arrives at summit with Rajsanjani close and Ahmadinejad farther away. Ban Ki Moon enters the NAM summit now running 90 mins late. Ban followed by Hamid Karzai also spot [Indian Prime Minister] Singh and Syrian FM Mualem. Zimbabwe's Mugabe and North Korea's Kim shake hands at Iran summit while Ban Ki Moon chats with Morsi."
0600 GMT: For most of Wednesday, news on Iranian media was beyond tedious. At one point, 19 of the top 20 stories on Khabar Online were on the lines of "Leader X of Country Y has arrived for the Non-Aligned Movement's Summit", a pattern duplicated on Press TV's website.
Then the evening was unexpectedly spiced up by the accounts of the encounter between United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and the Supreme Leader. Far from putting out an anodyne statement, Ban's spokesman presented the Secretary General as a tough-talking messenger insisting that the Islamic Republic co-operate with the International Atomic Energy Agency on nuclear issues, refrain from escalation of the Syrian crisis, answer questions on human rights, and stop vitriolic statements against Israel.
The Supreme Leader's office hit back. Ayatollah Khamenei had criticised the UN as a flawed, ineffective organisation, limited by the US attempt at dominance through the Security Council. Iran must be allowed its right to develop nuclear energy, and foreign powers must stop the arming of Syrian insurgents. Ban's comments on human rights and Israel were handled by a lack of response.
On the surface, then, a far-from-smooth episode in an Iranian script in which the UN Secretary General would hear the Islamic Republic's top figures and endorse their leadership.
Iran will be looking for more from others today, notably Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, who arrived in Tehran an hour ago. Barbara Slavin reports that he entered the conference hall with "a determined serious mien".
Posted via email from lissping
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