No gays in Iran: Ahmadinejad
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/09/25/2042189.htm

Greeted by protests: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks at
Columbia University in New York (Reuters)
Iran's firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told an audience at a
top US university that there were no gays in Iran as he skirted around
a question about the treatment of homosexuals in his country.

At the start of a hugely controversial visit to the United States, the
alleged Holocaust denier who has been accused of backing terrorism
tried to reach out to a sceptical US press and public.

"In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country," Mr
Ahmadinejad said to howls and boos among the Columbia University
audience.

"In Iran we do not have this phenomenon, I don't know who has told you
that we have it," he said.

Mr Ahmadinejad was challenged during his appearance on Amnesty
International figures that suggested that 200 people had been executed
in Iran so far this year, among them homosexuals.

He used his appearance at Columbia and a video link at the National
Press Club in Washington to say that talk of war against his country
was "propaganda" and reiterated that it had every right to pursue a
peaceful nuclear program.

Forced to defend his invitation to Mr Ahmadinejad, Columbia president
Lee Bollinger called him a "petty and cruel dictator" as he attacked
the Iranian leader, sitting alongside him, over the Holocaust and
Israel's right to exist.

Inviting Mr Ahmadinejad to speak at one of America's leading centres
of learning "is consistent with the idea that one should know thine
enemy ... to confront with the mind of evil," Mr Bollinger said in his
opening speech.

Mr Ahmadinejad, however, used his public stages to insist that the
Islamic republic wanted peace and security in line with the teachings
of God.

"We think that talk of war is a propaganda tool. Why is there a need
for a war?" he told the Press Club, speaking from New York where he
was to address the UN General Assembly.

Mr Ahmadinejad said Iran was working with UN nuclear inspectors "and
our activities are legal and for peaceful purposes."

Asked about Iraq, Mr Ahmadinejad again denied Iran was providing
advanced weapons to Shiite extremists to use against US troops.

"We think, in fact, the [US] military should seek an answer to its
defeat in Iraq elsewhere," he said, insisting Tehran wanted a stable
Iraq on its border.

Mr Ahmadinejad, who has called for the destruction of Israel and
downplayed the Holocaust, said he was open to meeting survivors of the
devastating Nazi pogrom against the Jews.

"But let us remember then where did the Holocaust happen to begin
with? It happened in Europe. And given that, why is it that the
Palestinian people should be displaced?" he said.

But outside Columbia, 100 protesters gathered to vent their fury that
Mr Ahmadinejad had been given a venue to speak out.

"Stop Ahmadinejad, the Hitler of Iran," chanted one protester,
Mordechi Levy of the Jewish Defence Organisation, calling for alumni
to boycott the university.

The New York Post headlined its story of Mr Ahmadinejad's appearance
at Columbia "Madman Guest of Dishonour," after earlier crying "Evil
has Landed."

The tabloid press led a public outcry over a request by Mr Ahmadinejad
to visit the Ground Zero site of New York's World Trade Centre, whose
twin towers were felled in the September 11 attacks of 2001.

His desired visit to what many Americans view as hallowed ground was
vetoed by New York police for security reasons, but in any case it
would have been a "travesty," according to US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice.

"I think this is somebody who is the President of a country that is
probably the greatest sponsor of state-sponsored terrorism, someone
who is a Holocaust denier, someone who has talked about wiping other
countries off the map," she told the CNBC television network.

Iranian opposition exiles and Jewish groups joined in the protest at
Columbia, waving pre-Islamic revolution Iranian flags and banners
depicting Mr Ahmadinejad as a swastika - the symbol of the Nazis.

- AFP