He made the remark in a ceremony marking the 1,150th birth anniversary of the Father of Iran's poetry Abdullah Jafar Ibn Mohammad Roudaki (858 - ca. 941).



"If the bullying and expansionist powers of the world have atomic bomb, missiles and planes, Iranians have great artists and poets like Roudaki, Hafez and Molana (Rumi)," said the president.



He stressed that message of the civilized nations, such as Iran, is peace, brotherhood and friendship for the entire world.



The president stressed that Iranians hate war-mongering, bullying and conspiracy and that means they hate expansionism.



Roudaki was a Persian poet, regarded as the first great literary genius of the modern Persian language, who composed poems in the Perso-Arabic alphabet or "New Persian" script. Roudaki is considered a founder of Persian classical literature.



Even though most of his biographers assert that he was completely blind, some early biographers are silent about this or do not refer to him as being born blind. His accurate knowledge and description of colors, as evident in his poetry, renders this assertion very doubtful.

Tehran, Dec 21, IRNA