Ahmadinejad calls for UN September 11 inquiry
– Fri Sep 24, 2:22 pm ET
UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejadsaid Friday the UN should investigate the "true reason" for the September 11 attacks as he defended a speech which implicated the US government in the atrocity.
"I did not pass a judgement, I simply made proposals for a humane solution to the problems that have risen as a result of 9/11," Ahmadinejad told a press conference.
"We also want to bring to your attention that hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our region were killed as a result of 9/11."
At a wide-ranging press conference in New York city where the World Trade Center once stood, Ahmadinejad made no attempt to pull back from the comments which President Barack Obama has called "hateful."
The Iranian leader called on the United Nations to investigate the 2001 attacks in which almost 3,000 people died, when hijacked planes were flown into the World Trade Center, as well as the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.
"I did not pass judgement, but don't you feel that the time has come to have a fact finding committee," Ahmadinejad said defending his speech.
"An event occurred, and under the pretext of that event two countries were invaded and up to now hundreds of thousands of people have been killed as a result. Don't you feel that that excuse has to be revised," he said, referring to the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq which followed the Al-Qaeda attacks.
"Don't you feel that if a fact-finding mission was present from the start to explore the true reason behind September 11 that we would not see the catastrophe of Afghanistan and Iraq today?
"Why do you assume that all nations must accept what the US government tells them?"
The Iranian president told the UN General Assembly on Thursday that there was a theory that "some segments within the US government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime.
"The majority of the American people as well as other nations and politicians agree with this view," he said.
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Iran's Ahmadinejad calls Sept 11 "big fabrication"
(Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday called the September 11 attacks on the United States a "big fabrication" that was used to justify the U.S. war on terrorism, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Ahmadinejad, who often rails against the West and Israel, made the comment in a meeting with Intelligence Ministry personnel.
It came amid escalating tension in the long-running dispute between Iran and the West over Tehran's nuclear program, with the United States pushing for new U.N. sanctions against the major oil producer.
Ahmadinejad described the destruction of the twin towers in New York on September 11, 2001 as a "complicated intelligence scenario and act," IRNA reported.
He added: "The September 11 incident was a big fabrication as a pretext for the campaign against terrorism and a prelude for staging an invasion against Afghanistan." He did not elaborate.
Nearly 3,000 people died in the hijacked airliner attacks on New York and Washington, which were carried out by al Qaeda operatives.
In January, Ahmadinejad termed the September 11 attacks "suspicious" and accused the West of seeking to dominate the Middle East.
Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel to be wiped off the map, was re-elected in a disputed presidential vote last June that stirred the largest display of internal unrest in the country since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
(Reporting by Ramin Mostafavi and Hashem Kalantari; writing by Fredrik Dahl; editing by Noah Barkin)
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