MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina's Jewish community points to Iran

Argentina's Jewish community demanded diplomatic relations with Iran be cut off claiming Teheran was behind the terrorist attack in which 85 people were killed in Buenos Aires 12 years ago on July 18.

"More than enough evidence exists to show Iran was the ideologue behind the attack. What are we waiting for to break off diplomatic relations with Iran?" Luis Grynwald, president of the Israelite Argentine Mutual Association (AMIA) said Tuesday.

Grynwald made the announcement before thousands who gathered to honour the victims of the 1994 attack which killed 85 people and injured over 200.

"It is unquestionably Iran's responsibility with the participation of Hezbollah. The war on international terrorism should unite all people. They are a totalitarian and murderous organization. We must not tolerate their presence in the country" insisted Grynwald.

A siren sounded at the precise time the bomb exploded at 0953, July 18, 1994. People lit candles, laid roses and held aloft photographs of the victims as the names of the 85 dead were read out.

The blast on that day reduced the seven-storey Jewish-Argentine Mutual Association (AMIA) community centre in Buenos Aires to rubble. The scale of death and destruction left Argentina's 200.000 strong Jewish community, Latin America's largest, in shock

AMIA president said that the Argentine administration has "the moral and lawful duty" to find the guilty because "impunity together with corruption are the scourges of the world." Grynwald demanded as he has on other occasions that both the attack on the AMIA and another that in 1992 flattened the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires leaving 29 dead be declared crimes against humanity.

Over the years the case has been marked by rumours of cover-ups and accusations of incompetence but little in the way of hard evidence. Minor figures, including a policeman who sold the van used in the attack have been named, but no-one has been convicted.

The current administration of President Nestor Kirchner has expressed a firm desire to produce results but so far there has been little obvious progress, Last year to meet the demands by Argentina's Jewish community Kirchner acknowledged by decree the government's responsibility in not finding those guilty of the attack against the AMIA.

Members of the US-based World Jewish Congress (WJC) meeting for the first time in Buenos Aires were to interview the president after the commemorations to add their voices to calls for the authorities to do more.