TEHRAN -- The President of the World Philosophy Day conference said that Iran plans to take legal action against UNESCO for its dissociation from the conference held in Tehran last week.

Speaking at the closing ceremony of the three-day conference on Tuesday, Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel gave no more details about the plan.
“We believe that UNESCO’s withdrawal occurred as result of complete obedience to the global powers and also think that UNESCO has turned into a political instrument in the hands of those powers; this is an issue causing us grave concern,” he said.
Haddad-Adel had previously said that UNESCO’s withdrawal produced “positive effects” for the conference.
In 2008, UNESCO accepted Iran’s bid to host this year’s the World Philosophy Day, which has been celebrated since 2002.
However, in a statement published on November 9, UNESCO announced that it would not take part in the World Philosophy Day events, which had been scheduled to be held from November 21 to 23 in Tehran.
“The conditions necessary to guarantee the effective organization of a UN international conference have not been met,” UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova said in the statement.
Iranian Ambassador and Permanent Delegate of the Islamic Republic of Iran to UNESCO Mohammadreza Majidi blamed the Israeli lobbies, saying that UNESCO pulled out of the World Philosophy Day under pressure from the Zionists.
UNESCO’s decision to back away from the event was made after a number of academics, European nations and the United States called for boycotting the event due to the Iranian government’s actions toward the opposition in the 2009 post-election unrest.