NEW YORK – US President Barack Obama yesterday condemned as hateful, offensive and inexcusable a suggestion by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of a US government role in the September 11th, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Mr Ahmadinejad also said there may be a meeting next month on his country’s disputed nuclear program.
Mr Obama, in an interview with the BBC Persian news service, lashed out at Ahmadinejad for the latest of what the White House called a long list of outrageous comments that would deepen Tehran’s isolation from the global community.
“It was offensive. It was hateful,” Mr Obama said according to interview excerpts released by the White House. “And particularly for him to make the statement here in Manhattan, just a little north of Ground Zero, where families lost their loved ones ... for him to make a statement like that was inexcusable.”
The US and its allies are locked in a standoff with Iran over its nuclear programme, which Washington believes aims to produce atomic weapons but which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes.
Mr Obama decided to sit down for the interview before Mr Ahmadinejad made his 9/11 comments as a way of speaking directly to the Iranian people. BBC Persian is broadcast in Farsi, the dominant language in Iran.
Mr Ahmadinejad, in an address at the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, said it was mostly US government officials and statesmen who believed al-Qaeda militants carried out the suicide plane hijacking attacks that brought down New York’s World Trade Centre and hit the Pentagon outside Washington.
He said that another theory was that “some segments within the US government orchestrated the attack”. He continued to discuss the issue yesterday, calling the background to the attacks “suspicious” during a news conference.
A senior White House official told reporters the remarks were part of a pattern from Mr Ahmadinejad, including denial of the Holocaust, that would further isolate the country and harm the interests of its people. – (Reuters)