His appearance at the rostrum was welcomed with applause, unusual for this place. There was a report that a day before, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University, tickets for this event were sold out in an hour and a half - with the same speed as for Bruce Springsteen's concert, which took place at the same time. The university meeting was attended mostly by Ahmadinejad's opponents - many went to it in order to escape into a terrifying world. It was like going to a horror movie. But they went nonetheless.
Ahmadinejad is no Springsteen, of course. He's sooner a hugely reduced copy of the great Luciano Pavarotti. When Pavarotti went on stage as Turido in Village Honor, everyone knew he would be singing the same part as other tenors and that Turido will be stabbed in the end. But after listening to Pavarotti, the audience left in tears of admiration. Other tenors failed to match this effect. But someone always has to be the first.
When Ahmadinejad spoke at the General Assembly this time, he performed just as he did a year or two years ago. In effect, he did not say anything new (except for calling America a "hooligan" state. But the impression from his recent address remains strong as ever.
Many expected the first day of the session to be a duel between U.S. President George W. Bush (by tradition, he spoke first at 9:00 a.m.) and his Iranian counterpart (he spoke at 5:00 p.m.). But the duel did not take place - the two men spoke in completely different dimensions.
Bush behaved like a policymaker. He devoted the first part of his speech to the global "struggle for freedom" and read out rather dubious lists of the countries restricting or promoting democracy. This section demonstrated why the world does not like America. It was the gist of a political philosophy which the next U.S. administration had better give up. The current one finds it uncomfortable to renounce this usual approach.
In the second part of his address, the U.S. president described his country's good deeds in the world. Bush proposed to double U.S. initial commitment to AIDS relief from $15 billion to $30 billion; Washington has launched a $1.2 billion malaria initiative; together with other nations, it has helped train 600,000 teachers and administrators.
This was a smooth transition to the America that the world really needs and will need for a long time - after it abandons its role of a global dictator. All in all, this was a very clever speech.
Ahmadinejad spoke like a preacher rather than policymaker, like a defender of the good and justice. He blamed the world for humiliating the noble institution of marriage and the female essence as the supreme manifestation of divine beauty, for trampling human rights underfoot - by way of example he spoke about whole nations (Palestinians in this case) being cut off from water and electricity and deprived of their land. The Iranian leader recalled that 900 million people on Earth lived on a dollar per day, that cheating and lies dominated international relations, that the victors in WWII were still following the roadmap of their global supremacy and enjoyed more rights than other countries, and that institutions like the UN Security Council were playing the roles of the prosecutor, judge and hangman in one go.
Just to repeat, Ahmadinejad did not say anything new - for instance, about the scandalous Iranian nuclear program. He made no political news but urged the United States to leave the road of arrogance and subjugation to the devil and purify itself. He warned that the decline of the empire was near and that soon the West would lose its ability to rule the world. But he made similar statements before. The United Nations is the venue where such speeches are made, or where they were appropriate at the time when it seemed that it could change the world.
Pavarotti has a unique achievement to his credit - he greatly helped to make opera popular at a time when it was turning into a retro pleasure for the few elect. His concerts filled stadiums, not merely halls with velvet-covered boxes.
Ahmadinejad is returning to world politics something without which it cannot exist - the faith of some part of humanity that a fair peace and honest policy are possible. Ahmadinejad is bringing the UN closer to the public and making dramatic an organization which has seen too many top bureaucrats addressing each other with smooth diplomatic speeches. For most of the world, the UN is a place where leaders like Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad express the thoughts of many people. This is something, although these others know that this is an archaic performance, an opera, that it will end and the curtain will come down.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
