President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday that the American people are eager to hear different opinions about the world, and he is looking forward to having the chance to voice them during his trip to the US, state media reported.

The Iranian leader left Sunday for New York to address the UN General Assembly and speak to students and teachers during a forum at Columbia University. The visit has caused a stir in New York.

Ahmadinejad said the American people have been denied “correct information”, and his visit will give them a chance to hear a different voice, the official IRNA news agency reported.

“The United States is a big and important country with a population of 300 million. Due to certain issues, the American people in the past years have been denied correct and clear information about global developments and are eager to hear different opinions,” Ahmadinejad was quoted by IRNA as saying.

State-run television also quoted Ahmadinejad before boarding his presidential plane Sunday as saying that the General Assembly was an “important podium” to express Iran’s views on regional and global issues. He is scheduled to address the Assembly on Tuesday — his third time attending the New York meeting in three years.

He is also set to speak at a Columbia University question-and-answer forum on Monday in New York.

His request to lay a wreath at ground zero, site of the World Trade Centre 2001 terror attacks, was denied by city officials and condemned by politicians.

Police rejected Ahmadinejad’s request, citing construction and security concerns.

Columbia University President Lee Bollinger has resisted requests to cancel the event but promised to introduce the talk himself with a series of tough questions on topics including Ahmadinejad's views on the Holocaust, his call for the destruction of the state of Israel and his government's alleged support of terrorism.

Political analyst Iraj Jamshidi said Ahmadinejad looks at the General Assembly as a publicity forum simply to surprise world leaders with his unpredictable harsh rhetoric.

A top US commander on Friday accused Iran of supplying powerful roadside bombs to militants in Afghanistan, as a suicide car bomb in the capital killed a French soldier and an Afghan bystander, AP reports from Kabul. Heavy battles in the violence-plagued south, meanwhile, killed 75 Taliban and at least six civilians.

Adm William Fallon, the head of US Central Command, said Iran's Revolutionary Guard is supplying roadside bomb parts for the type of sophisticated and deadly bombs found in Iraq known as explosively formed penetrators.

  ‘Iran supplying lethal aid to Taliban’
“The Iranians are clearly supplying some amount of lethal aid,'' Fallon said. Fallon said the US would “act decisively” if the cross-border flow continues. His comments were not meant as a threat of military action against Iran but a suggestion that border interdiction efforts may need to be increased, Fallon’s aides said later.