The New Nation - Internet Edition

AP, New York

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defended Holocaust revisionists and raised questions about who carried out the Sept 11 atacks in a tense showdown Monday at Columbia University, where the school's head introduced the hard-line leader by calling him a "pety and cruel dictator." Ahmadinejad portrayed himself as an intellectual and argued that his administration respected reason and science. But the former engineering professor, appearing shaken and irate over he called "insults" from his host, soon found himself drawn into the type of rhetoric that has alienated American audiences in the past He provoked derisive laughter by responding to a question about Iran's execution of homosexuals by saying: "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country t I don't know who's told you that we have this." Columbia's president, Lee Bollinger, set the combative tone in his introduction of Ahmadinejad: "Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a pety and cruel dictator."