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| Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking at Columbia University in New York on Monday. |
In an address before students and faculty at Columbia University in New York on Monday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that if the Holocaust really happened, the Palestinian people mustn't be forced to pay the price.
The Iranian leader defended his calls for more research into the Holocaust, saying that the Nazi genocide of the Jews in World War Two was 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?" Ahmadinejad asked.
"You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated," Columbia President Lee Bollinger told Ahmadinejad about his Holocaust denial. "Will you cease this outrage?"
"We love all nations," Ahmadinejad said in response to the first query. "We are friends with the Jewish people, there are many Jews in Iran living peacefully with security."
He described the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a "60-year-old problem," which can only be resolved by allowing "the people of Palestine" - Jews, Muslims and Christians - to decide their own fate, without international intervention.
Introducing Ahmadinejad, whose address at the campus sparked widespread protests, Bollinger compared him to a "petty and cruel dictator." The university president also took aim at Ahmadinejad's previous calls for Israel's destruction, asking: "We have ties with Israel, do you plan to wipe us off the map too?"
With Ahmadinjad sitting next to him on the platform, Bollinger also demanded that the Iranian leader explain his country's recent execution of human rights activists and even children, about its support of violent insurgency in Iraq and its oppression of women, homosexuals and followers of the Bahai religion.
Bollinger was strongly criticized for inviting Ahmadinejad to Columbia, and had promised tough questions in his introduction to Ahmadinejad's talk. But the strident and personal nature of his attack on the president of Iran was startling.
"Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator," Bollinger said, to loud applause. He said Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust might fool the illiterate and ignorant.
"When you come to a place like this it makes you simply ridiculous," Bollinger said. "The truth is that the Holocaust is the most documented event in human history."
Ahmadeinjad, when he finally took the stage, called the introduction an "insult" designed to cloud the open-mindedness of the audience and their ability to fairly judge his views. He noted that such a negative introduction would not take place in Iran.
"There were insults and claims that were incorrect, regretfully," Ahmadinejad said, accusing Bollinger of offering unfriendly treatment under the influence of the U.S. press and politicians.
"I should not begin by being affected by this unfriendly treatment," Ahmadinejad said.
He did not address Bollinger's accusations directly, instead launching into a long religious discursion laced with quotes from the Quran before turning to criticism of the administation of U.S. President George W. Bush and past American governments, from warrantless wiretapping to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
He closed his prepared remarks with a terse smile, to applause and boos, before taking questions from the audience.
'No war plans'
Ahmadinejad said earlier Monday that Iran would not launch an attack on Israel or any other country, and he does not believe the U.S. is preparing for war against Iran.
"Iran will not attack any country," Ahmadinejad told The Associated Press. "Iran has always maintained a defensive policy, not an offensive one, he said, and has never sought to expand its territory."
Asked whether he believed the U.S. is preparing for war, he responded "that is not how I see it... I believe that some of the talk in this regard arises first of all from anger. Secondly, it serves the electoral purposes domestically in this country. Third, it serves as a cover for policy failures over Iraq."
In a 30-minute interview with The Associated Press at a hotel near the United Nations, Ahmadinejad struck a soothing tone. He said Iranian foreign policy was based on humanitarian concerns and seeking justice.
He reiterated his call for a debate at the United Nations on world issues with U.S. President George W. Bush.
Referring to fears of a military campaign against Iran, he said "we don't think you can compensate for one mistake by committing more mistakes."
The Iranian president, in what is believed to be his first comments on a reported attack September 6 by Israel Air Force aircraft inside Syria, said the attack stemmed from Israeli expansionism and it had nothing to with Iran.
Israel disagreed sharply with the Ahmadinejad's description of Iran's foreign policy. "The Iranian government, through its words and actions, has an aggressive and expansionist policy," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev.
"They are supporting extremist groups in the Palestinian territories and in Lebanon. They have their own aggressive nuclear weapons program."
"I think we would be irresponsible if we didn't take the threat that Iran poses to the region and the world seriously," Regev said.
But the president also lashed out at Israel, accusing it of occupation and racism.
His comments came after he met leaders of an anti-Zionist Jewish group. Mainstream Jewish groups were among those who condemned an invitation by Columbia University for the Iranian leader to speak later Monday at its World Leaders Forum.
"We do not recognize that regime [Israel] because it is based on occupation and racism. It constantly attacks its neighbors," Ahmadinejad said in a video news conference from New York with the National Press Club in Washington, citing recent IDF action in Syria and Lebanon.
"It kills people. It drives people from their homes."
He also took a swipe at the United States, saying: "We oppose the way the U.S. government tries to manage the world We think this method is wrong. It leads to war, discrimination and bloodshed."
Ahmadinejad arrived in New York on Sunday as critics protested his planned speech at Columbia, and the hardline leader denied that his country was building a nuclear weapon.
"In political relations right now, the nuclear bomb is of no use," Ahmadinejad said in a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday.
"If it was useful it would have prevented the downfall of the Soviet Union. If it was useful it would resolved the problem the Americans have in Iraq. The time of the bomb is passed."
The interview with CBS reporter Scott Pelley was taped Thursday in Tehran. Ahmadinejad arrived Sunday evening in New York, according a spokesman for the Iranian Mission to the United Nations. He was to speak at Columbia on Monday and address the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.
But the protests had already started. Elected officials demonstrating at Columbia claimed the Iranian leader is trying to obtain nuclear weapons, is a Holocaust denier and rules his country with an iron fist. The university defended the decision to allow Ahmadinejad to speak as a matter of free speech.
Source: Ha'aretz
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