New York/Washington - From the time his Columbia University host on stage called him a "petty and cruel dictator," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had a clear sign that he was in for a tough ride before a New York audience. Despite the thousands of demonstrators outside the upper West Side campus and protests by US Senator Hillary Clinton and former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger against his appearance, the Iranian leader calmly stuck to his positions that Iran's nuclear activities were peaceful and that the Holocaust needed historical proof.
Ahmadinejad was attending Columbia's annual world leader's forum on the sidelines of this week's UN General Assembly session, and the university's invitation drew howls of protest in the day's leading up to Monday's appearance.
Columbia officials used free-speech arguments to defend the event. From the stage, university President Lee Bollinger said that Ahmadinejad's appearance helped people confront "the mind of evil."
Even in Washington, US State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said that Ahmadinejad had a right to speak freely in the United States, even if what he says is "anathema to segments of our population."
Bollinger, in a long introduction, demanded that the leader explain Iran's recent executions of 210 human-rights activists and even children, its support of violent insurgency in Iraq and its oppression of women, homosexuals and followers of the Bahai religion.
Bollinger noted that Ahmadinejad's previous denials of the Holocaust raised questions about his intelligence.
"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."
Ahmadinejad, 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.
"We don't think it's necessary ... to come in with a series of claims and to attempt in a so-called manner to provide vaccination of some sort to our students," Ahmadinejad said, to a round of applause in the audience.
Ahmadinejad was only booed once - really, laughed at - when he answered a question about Iran's harsh treatment of homosexuals.
"We don't have homosexuals like in your country," he said. "We don't have that in our country."
Ahmadinejad made it clear he had no intention of having better relations with Israel because of the oppression of Palestinians. But he was open to having good relations with the United States and other countries.
Washington has had no diplomatic relations with Iran since the Iranian Revolution, when the US embassy staff in Tehran was taken captive for 444 days from 1979-81.
Ahmadinejad sought to justify Iran's nuclear programme, which he said was peaceful and necessary for Iran to maintain its independence. Iranian nuclear activities have been the subject of UN Security Council sanctions resolutions.
The United States, along with Britain and France, are negotiating a third resolution to tighten sanctions on Iran for its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, a process that could lead to building a weapon.
The United States had been open to an international "fuel bank" to supply Iran with enriched uranium, but Ahmadinejad, as in the past, rejected the proposal, saying that Iran cannot rely on outside sources for nuclear fuel to meet its energy needs, because it would compromise the independence of his country.
"We want to have the right to self-determination toward our future," he said. "We want to be independent."
Ahmadinejad pointed to past agreements for supplies from abroad, which were then unilaterally cancelled or put under embargo.
"You have not even given us spare aircraft parts that we need for civilian aircraft for 28 years, under the name of embargo and sanctions," he said.
In an earlier video press conference from New York with reporters in Washington, Ahmadinejad rejected accusations by the US military that his country was arming militants in Iraq. "This doesn't exist," he said.
The US military believes the Iranian government through its Revolutionary Guard has helped train and equip Shiite militias and other insurgents, and cites evidence that Iran has provided weaponry including arms and anti-tank mines.
"The military should seek an answer to its defeat in Iraq elsewhere, in the misguided policies that it has led, in the wrong perspective that it has had toward Iraq and its people," Ahmadinejad said.
He defended Iran's human-rights record, saying that a 2007 Amnesty International report critical of conditions in Iran was wrong and reflected a lack of understanding Iran.
"Our people are the freest people in the world, the most aware people in the world, the most enlightened, so to say," he said.
When asked about discrimination against women in the country, he replied: "The freest women in the world are women in Iran."
Ahmadinejad lashed out at the critics by saying, "We should all have the capacity to listen to everything."
"I'm surprised, in a place where they claim that they have freedom of information, they are trying to prevent people from talking," he said. "That's not good."
