Iranian parliament speaker praises North Korea

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Iran's parliament speaker on Thursday admired North Korea for its anti-US stance and said Washington's pressure on Pyongyang over its testing of a nuclear weapons would not affect the communist country. Both countries are locked in diplomatic standoffs with the West over their nuclear programs. The United Nations imposed sanctions on North Korea after it conducted its weapons test last month. The comments by speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel came in talks with his North Korean counterpart, Che Tai Buk, who is in Tehran for a gathering of the Association of Asian Parliaments for Peace. "The Democratic People's Republic of Korea enjoys special respect by the Iranian people because of its resistance against the arrogant policies of the United States," Adel said, according to the Iranian state news agency IRNA. "As long as a government has support from its people, pressures and sanctions by the US will not have any affect," he said.