Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is addressing the UN General Assembly on Tuesday after defending Holocaust revisionists and raising questions about who carried out the September 11 attacks in a tense showdown at Columbia University.
Thousands of people protested Ahmadinejad’s visit on Monday and more were expected to rally in the streets on Tuesday when the Iranian leader attends the meeting for the third time in three years.
In his speech on Tuesday afternoon, Ahmadinejad presented his country as a reasonable seeker of peace and justice and denied that it holds any violent intentions against the United States, Israel or any of its immediate neighbours.
He also denied all the chief accusations against Iran— that it is providing weapons to kill US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, supporting terrorism or breaking international law by developing nuclear weapons.
Asked about his country’s nuclear intentions during the appearance at Columbia on Monday, Ahmadinejad insisted the program is peaceful, legal and entirely within Iran’s rights, despite attempts by “monopolistic, selfish” powers to derail it. “How come is it that you have that right, and we can’t have it?” he added.
Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, set the combative tone in his introduction of Ahmadinejad: “Mr President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator”.
Ahmadinejad retorted that Bollinger’s opening was “an insult to information and the knowledge of the audience here”.
Ahmadinejad drew audience applause at times, such as when he bemoaned the plight of the Palestinians.
Asked why he had asked to visit the World Trade Centre site, Ahmadinejad said he wanted to express sympathy for the victims of the September 11 attacks.
Then he appeared to question whether al Qaida was responsible, saying more research was needed.
“If the root causes of 9/11 are examined properly — why it happened, what caused it, what were the conditions that led to it, who truly was involved — and put it all together to understand how to prevent the crisis in Iraq, fix the problem in Afghanistan and Iraq combined,” Ahmadinejad said.
