At Columbia University, Ahmadinejad of Iran parries and puzzles By Helene Cooper Tuesday, September 25, 2007 NEW YORK:

He said there were no homosexuals in Iran - not one - and that the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews should not be treated as fact, but theory, and therefore open to debate and more research. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, aired these and other bewildering thoughts in a two-hour verbal contest at Columbia University on Monday, providing some ammunition to those who said there was no point in inviting him to speak. Yet his appearance also offered evidence of why he is widely admired in the developing world for his defiance toward Western, especially American, power. In repeated clashes with his hosts, Ahmadinejad accused the United States of supporting terrorist groups and characterized as hypocritical U.S. and European efforts to rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions. "If you have created the fifth generation of atomic bombs and are testing them already, who are you to question other people who just want nuclear power," Ahmadinejad said, adding, pointedly: "I think the politicians who are after atomic bombs, politically, they're backwards. Retarded." His speech at Columbia, in advance of his planned speech Tuesday at the United Nations, produced a day of intense protests and counter protests around the campus. It was a performance at once both defiant - he said Iran could not recognize Israel "because it is based on ethnic discrimination, occupation and usurpation, and it consistently threatens its neighbors" - and conciliatory - he said he wanted to visit the site of the World Trade Center attack to "show my respect" for what he called "a tragic event." And he said that even if the Holocaust had occurred, the Palestinians should not pay the price for it. He began the afternoon on the defensive. Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia, under intense attack for the invitation - one protester outside the auditorium passed out fliers that said, "Bollinger, too bad bin Laden is not available" - opened the event with a 10minute verbal assault. He said, "Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator," adding, "You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated."

The Iranian president, seated 10 feet, or 3 meters, away from him on the stage, wore a frozen smile. The anti-Ahmadinejad portion of the audience, which looked to be about 70 percent of it, cheered and chortled. Bollinger praised himself and Columbia for showing that they believed in freedom of speech by inviting the Iranian president, then attacked. He said it was "well documented" that Iran was a state sponsor of terrorism, accused Iran of fighting a proxy war against the United States in Iraq and questioned why Iran had refused "to adhere to the international standards" of disclosure for its nuclear program. "I doubt," Bollinger concluded, "that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions." Ahmadinejad did not, in fact, directly answer the questions, but he did address them. Before doing so, though, he said pointedly: "In Iran, tradition requires when you invite a person to be a speaker, we actually respect our students enough to allow them to make their own judgment, and don't think it's necessary before the speech is even given to come in with a series of complaints to provide vaccination to the students and faculty." He added, to some cheers, "Nonetheless, I shall not begin by being affected by this unfriendly treatment." Ahmadinejad's much-talked-about appearance at Columbia came as the opening act of a week of dramatic theater here as the UN General Assembly opened its annual session. He, along with his nemesis, President George W. Bush, is scheduled to address the General Assembly on Tuesday. Bush, asked about Columbia's decision to invite Ahmadinejad, told Fox News that it was "O.K. with me," but he added that he might not have extended the invitation himself. "When you really think about it," Bush said, "he's the head of a state sponsor of terror, he's - and yet an institution in our country gives him a chance to express his point of view, which really speaks to the freedoms of the country. I'm not sure I'd have offered the same invitation." Ahmadinejad is allowed under international law and diplomatic protocols to travel freely within a 25-mile, or 40-kilometer, radius of Columbus Circle in Manhattan. But the police said last week that he would not be allowed anywhere near the World Trade Center site during his trip. Inside the auditorium, the Columbia students laughed appreciatively when Ahmadinejad pushed back against the attempts by John Coatsworth, a university dean and moderator of the event, to get him to stop rambling on tangential issues and to answer questions specifically.

"Do you or your government seek the destruction of the state of Israel?" Coatsworth asked. "We love all people," Ahmadinejad dodged. "We are friends of the Jews. There are many Jews living peacefully in Iran." He went on to say that the Palestinian "nation" should be allowed a referendum to decide their own future. Coatsworth persisted: "I think you can answer that question with a simple yes or no." Ahmadinejad was having none of it. "You ask the question and then you want the answer the way you want to hear it," he shot back. "I ask you, is the Palestinian issue not a question of international importance? Please tell me yes or no." For that, he got a round of applause from students, who had lined up four hours before the speech to get into the auditorium. Online tickets evaporated in 90 minutes last week, they said, almost on par with a Bruce Springsteen concert. "I'm proud of my university today," said Stina Reksten, a 28-year old graduate student from Norway. "I don't want to confuse the very dire human rights situation in Iran with the issue here, which is freedom of speech. This is about academic freedom." It remains unclear whether Columbia's leaders were able to mollify critics with their critical treatment of Ahmadinejad. But they made some headway. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee sent out an e-mail message shortly after the speech with the subject line, "A Must Read: Columbia University President's Intro of Iran's Ahmadinejad today." Inside the message was a transcript of Bollinger's introduction.