Iran repeats opposition to two-state solution

Any plan to divide a Palestinian state would be unacceptable, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday, but added that such a state could exist temporarily as part of "liberated territory." "Any plan which would lead to the division of Palestine is unacceptable," Khamenei said in a speech to an international conference, as the United Nations continues to mull a membership application filed by the Palestinian Authority. "Any plan that would create two states... would be accepting a Zionist state in the land of Palestine," Khamenei told an "International Conference on Palestine" in the Islamic republic's capital. He again called Israel a "cancerous tumor" and "a permanent threat" to peace in the Middle East, as he often does in speeches on the issue. "It goes without saying that the Palestinian people, as they did in Gaza, will create a state... on any liberated Palestinian land," Khamenei said. "But the ultimate goal is to liberate all of Palestine from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea." "We do not propose a conventional war by Islamic countries, throwing the Jews into the sea or arbitration by the UN and other international bodies," but a "referendum by (indigenous) Palestinians" regardless of religion but excluding Jews who have immigrated, Khamenei said. In August, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the potential recognition of a Palestinian state by the United Nations should only be a "step forward" towards "full liberation." The UN Security Council on September 23 took up the request for full recognition of a Palestinian state over the vehement opposition of Israel and the United States. The conference is being attended by parliamentarians from some 20 nations and figures including Khaled Meshaal, exiled political chief of the Palestinian Islamist Hamas group, and Ramadan Abdullah, secretary general of Islamic Jihad.