Tehran - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Wednesday termed the UN anti-racism conference in Geneva a defeat for Israel, Fars news agency reported.

   "They [the Israelis] wanted to make a new interpretation of racism but for the first time [at an international conference], the freedom spirit of the nations and governments neutralized the Zionists' [Israel's] evil plans and became victorious," Ahmadinejad said.

   Speaking in a meeting of state prosecutors in Tehran, Ahmadinejad once again accused Israel of having a racist government and committed in Gaza "one of the most agonizing crimes in history."

   "They [Israel] kill innocent people, build atomic bombs and then misuse human rights as a justification for their inhuman acts just as they did with the Holocaust," Ahmadinejad said.

   During his speech Monday in Geneva, over 40 diplomats representing Western nations walked out of the hall as soon as Ahmadinejad began attacking Israel.

   Tehran media, however, hailed Ahmadinejad as the hero of Geneva and praised him for standing up against Israel and its Western supporters in an international conference.

   Ahmadinejad further said in the Tehran conference that the West wanted to hold the Geneva conference in a way so that their aims would be realized.

   "But then they realized that Iran's readiness to attend the conference had thwarted all their plans and there was no escape for the Zionists from an international condemnation."

   The Iranian president also said that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had asked him to make a "soft" speech, which he, however, rejected.

   "We asked him whether he meant not talking about the crime in Gaza, the attacks against our neighbouring countries [Afghanistan and Iraq] and the terror of the Palestinian people," Ahmadinejad said.

   "If not exposing all this at a UN conference, then where should such issues be raised?" he added.

   Ban Ki-moon told the German Press Agency dpa Tuesday in Malta that that he had urged Ahmadinejad to make a balanced and constructive contribution in Geneva, but "what he did was out of the scope of the conference and beyond what the international community expected."