Iran Nukes Become Topic At Davos Forum
Israeli election front-runner Benjamin Netanyahu told a session of the World Economic Forum that keeping nuclear weapons out of Iran's hands was more important than the economy because the financial meltdown is reversible - and a nuclear Iran wouldn't be.
"What is not reversible is the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a fanatic radical regime ... We have never had, since the dawn of the nuclear age, nuclear weapons in the hands of such a fanatical regime," he said.
Iran maintains that it is seeking nuclear power for peaceful purposes and not for a weapons program. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was to appear on a discussion panel later in the day.
The annual gathering of 2,500 business and corporate leaders in Davos, Switzerland, is taking place amid economic gloom that has seen personal fortunes trimmed, companies shuttered and hundreds of thousands jobs lost. The failure of the world's financial community and of regulators to detect and deflect the spiraling crisis has left many groping for answers - and questioning what went wrong on a moral, even spiritual level.
"We have trusted the invisible hand so much that we forgot to bring virtue to bear on our decisions so the invisible hand has let go of some important things, like the common good," said theologian Jim Willis, CEO of Sojourners USA.
"The common good has not been very common in our decision-making about economics for a long time," he said.
In other news from the Davos forum:
"Help is indeed needed urgently," said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Erdogan was angry after being cut off by a panel moderator after listening to an impassioned monologue by Peres defending Israel's recent offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Erdogan declared to Peres: "You are killing people."
A finger-pointing Peres told Erdogan at Thursday's panel that he would have done the same if rockets had been falling on Istanbul.
"This is the first I've heard of Prime Minister Putin coming out for free enterprise," Clinton told an audience at the World Economic Forum on Thursday, a day after the Russian leader warned that too much government involvement in the economy could be "dangerous" and cautioned against "blind faith in the state's omnipotence."
Putin has often been criticized for exerting state control over Russia's key industries such as oil and gas.
Clinton joked: "I hope it works for him."
After chuckles from the crowd, the philanthropist and husband of new U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton took a more serious tone and described the challenges of a world he said was "in so much trouble."
Peter Sutherland, now chairman of Goldman Sachs International, also questioned whether the United States and India had any real desire to conclude the Doha round of trade talks, which have now bumbled into their eighth year with no agreement in sight.
"The present situation is a pathetic reflection on the multilateral system, which everyone has expounded as being vital to future of the global economy," Sutherland told journalists at the World Economic Forum.
"It is nothing less than disgraceful that the discussions which took place in the latter part of 2008 ... have not led to a breakthrough," he added. "The world badly needs a confidence boost. It also needs an antidote to the protectionism which is already evident in the responses to the global slowdown."