According to a report by the Associate Press Columbia University said

it does not plan to call off a speech by Iran's president despite  pressure from critics including the City Council speaker, who said the

Ivy League school was providing a forum for "hate-mongering vitriol."

Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad is traveling to New York to address the United

Nations General Assembly. He was scheduled to appear on 24th September at a question-and- answer session with Columbia faculty and students as part of the school's World Leaders Forum.

His request to lay a wreath to honor the victims of 9/11 terrorist attack

in New York was rejected by the White House, which alleges that Iran

supports terrorism, a charge refuted by Iran.

It is apprehended that the supporters of Israel may disrupt his speech

at Columbia as they have done it on different platform many times for

people not liked by them, and labeled as "hate mongering vitriol. They

had bitterly criticized Jimmy Carter after he published his recent book

about Middle East. Victor Ostrovsky in "THE OTHER SIDE OF DECEPTION," Chapter 30, accuses that in 1991 that Zionists had plotted to assassinate Pres. George H.W. Bush during the Madrid Peace Conference.

Ahmadi Nejad ' s Letters to Americans:

On 29 November 2006, Ahmadi Nejad released to UN reporters an open

letter to the American people addressed to "Noble Americans" and

attacked the US administration' s foreign policy against Iraq and

Palestine as "illegal and immoral" towards the global community and

American citizens alike. Further, Ahmadi Nejad had urged the winners of the 2006 US midterm elections to act with truth and justice rather than

coercion and force to "remedy some of the past afflictions and

alleviate some of the global resentment and hatred of America." This

letter echoed an 18-page letter sent to Mr. Bush in May 2006 to which

Bush did not reply.

Reactions from the United States State Department dismissed the letter

as a public relations gesture, and emphasized the importance of the

Iranian leader's actions rather than his words. Other commentators

applauded Ahmadi Nejad ' s condemnation of US Foreign Policy as the words of a fair and reasonable man, and that perhaps US rhetoric of his

extremism slandered Ahmadi Nejad unjustly.

Ahmadi Nejad was quoted to have said that Israel should be "wiped off

the map." Observers pointed out that Ahmadi Nejad never said these

words. Though the accuracy of his exact words as reported by Western

media has been in question, his speech inspired thousands of Iranian

to stage an anti-Israel protest on 28 October 2005. The protesters chanted

"Death to Israel, death to America" while they trampled and burned

Israeli and American flags. International condemnation followed.

On 08 December 2005, Ahmadi Nejad gave a speech at the summit of Muslim nations to again condemn the existence of Israel. On 13 December 2005, Ahmadi Nejad aroused immediate condemnation from Israel, Germany, and the European Union when in the Iranian city of Zahedan, he accused the West of inviting the "myth of the Holocaust." Further Ahmadi Nejad asserted:

"Some European countries insist on saying that Hitler killed millions

of innocent Jews in furnaces. And they insist so strongly on this issue

that anyone who denies it is condemned and sent to prison...Although we

don't accept this claim, if we suppose it is true, our question for the

Europeans is: is the killing of innocent Jewish people by Hitler the

reason for their support to the occupier of Jerusalem? They faced

injustice in Europe so why do the repercussions fall on the Palestinians? ...it will be good if you give a piece of your own soil, a piece of soil in Europe, the United States, Canada, or Alaska to them

[Jews] so that they can create a country for themselves."

Shah N. Khan -09/22/2007