(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-11-28 19:02

TEHRAN -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday dismissed the US-sponsored Annapolis conference on the Middle East as "a failure," the official IRNA news agency reported.

"Even the most unintelligent people from the political point of view will soon understand that the Annapolis conference was already a failure," Ahmadinejad told IRNA at the end of a cabinet session.

"When the real representatives of the Palestinian nation and the resistance groups were not attending the conference, and the rights, votes and demands of the Palestinian nation were not recognized, hundreds of such meetings would be futile," he said.

The Iranian president also criticized the sponsors of the Annapolis conference, saying they were only following "political propaganda."

"They are following a political propaganda to say that the Arab states have sit around a table with the Zionist regime," Ahmadinejad said, urging them to let the Arab states hold a referendum in their own countries to see whether their nations agreed with their participation in the conference.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in remarks closing the Annapolis conference on the Middle East Tuesday, voiced measured optimism for Middle East peace and announced Israeli and Palestinians leaders will launch formal peace negotiations at the White House Wednesday.

Rice made the remarks at the closing of the one-day conference attended by the representatives of more than 40 countries, regions and international organizations.

The conference was proposed by US President George W. Bush in July. It was the first major international conference on the Middle East sponsored by the Bush administration in seven years.