Ahmadinejad denies nuke- weapons, defends Holocaust

N.Arun Kumar Singh

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defended Holocaust revisionists and raised questions about who carried out the September 11 attacks in a tense showdown at Columbia University, where the school’s head introduced the hard-line leader by calling him a "petty and cruel dictator." Ahmadinejad portrayed himself as an intellectual and argued that his administration respected reason and science. But the former engineering professor, appeared shaken and irate over what he called "insults" from his host. = `No Gays in Iran` He provoked derisive laughter by responding to a question about Iran’s execution of homosexuals by saying: "In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country ... I don’t know who’s told you that we have this." Columbia University’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. Israel and Holocaust Ahmadinejad has in the past called for Israel’s elimination. Asked by an audience member if Iran sought the destruction of Israel, Ahmadinejad did not answer directly. "We are friends of all the nations," he said. "We are friends with the Jewish people. There are many Jews in Iran living peacefully with security." Ahmadinejad’s past statements about the Holocaust also have raised hackles in the West, and were soundly attacked by Bollinger. "In a December 2005 state television broadcast, you described the Holocaust as the fabricated legend," Bollinger told Ahmadinejad said in his opening remarks. "One year later, you held a two-day conference of Holocaust deniers." "You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated," Bollinger told Ahmadinejad about the leader’s Holocaust denial. "Will you cease this outrage?" "When you come to a place like this, it makes you simply ridiculous. The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history," he said. Ahmadinejad said he wasn’t passing judgment on whether the Holocaust occurred, but that, "assuming this happened, what does it have to do with the Palestinian people?" He went on to say that he was defending the rights of European academics imprisoned for "questioning certain aspects" of the Holocaust, an apparent reference to a small number who have been prosecuted under national laws for denying or minimizing the genocide. "There’s nothing known as absolute," Ahmadinejad said. He said the Holocaust has been abused as a justification for Israeli mistreatment of the Palestinians. "Why is it that the Palestinian people are paying the price for an event they had nothing to do with?" he asked. `Who attacked WTC? ` Asked why he had asked to visit the World Trade Center site — a request denied by New York authorities — 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 was truly involved, who was really 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. Ahmadinejad offered quotes from the Quran and criticism of the Bush administration and past American governments, from warrant-less wiretapping to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. He closed his prepared remarks with a terse smile, to applause and boos, before taking questions from the audience. Nuclear issue closed Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that Iran's disputed nuclear program is closed as a political issue and said Tehran will ignore a UN Security Council demand imposed by "arrogant powers" to curb its nuclear program. Instead, he told world leaders at the UN General Assembly that Iran has decided to pursue the monitoring of its nuclear program "through its appropriate legal path," the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the UN nuclear watchdog agency. In 2002, Bush labelled Iran as part of an "axis of evil" that also included Iraq and North Korea and has accused it of backing international terrorist groups. Bureau Report