Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been lobbying Muslims to be more active in seeking an end to Israel's continuing assault on Gaza and Lebanon, his office said Saturday.
"The silence of the United Nations... and some Western countries' support for Zionist atrocities against defenceless children and women calls for a more active role by Muslim nations to put an end to these attacks," Ahmadinejad said.
The president, a fierce opponent of Israel's existence, also held telephone talks with leaders from Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and called for an emergency meeting of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
Israel launched its offensive against Lebanon on July 12 after the group Hezbollah, which is supported by Iran and its main regional ally Syria, seized two Israeli soldiers in a deadly raid.
But Ahmadinejad said Israel had used the incident as a "pretext for a pre-planned plot for a wide-ranging assault against Lebanon aimed at destroying its infrastructure and killing innocent civilians."
In a separate letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Iranian Foreign Minister Manoucheher Mottaki urged him to step up efforts to halt the "savage attacks by the Zionist regime".