Israel can only rely on self against Iran threat: PM

JERUSALEM: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel cannot rely on any other country, even an ally, when it comes to facing up to the perceived nuclear threat from Iran.

"We appreciate the efforts of the international community to halt Iran's nuclear programme," Netanyahu said in a speech on the eve of Holocaust Day.

"But at no stage will we abandon our fate into the hands of other countries, even our best friends," he said, in an apparent reference to the United States whose Secretary of State John Kerry flew in to Israel on Sunday.

US President Barack Obama warned last month during his own visit to Israel that a nuclear Iran could never be contained and pose a danger to the entire world, reiterating he would not rule out military action.

Iran denies charges of developing the atomic bomb and insists its nuclear programme is solely for peaceful purposes.

"What has changed since the Shoah (Holocaust) is our determination and our capacity to defend ourselves with our own means," said the Israeli premier, who charged that Iran openly proclaimed an ambition to annihilate the Jewish state.

"The murderous hatred of the Jewish people has not disappeared from the world. It has changed face and become a murderous hatred of the state of Israel," he said at the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

President Shimon Peres, at the same ceremony, said anti-Semitism was still alive in Europe. "Crises are again being exploited to create new Nazi parties, ridiculous but dangerous," he said.