US:Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has shrugged off concerns about the possibility of a US or Israeli attack on his country, dismissing talk of war as a propaganda tool.
As protests dogged the first day of his visit to New York for this week's UN General Assembly meeting, Mr Ahmadinejad said Iran had violated no international agreements by pursuing nuclear power.
He said the country was working with UN nuclear inspectors, insisting "our activities are legal and for peaceful purposes".
He warned the US that it could not prevent "the pursuit of science" and added: "No one has the right to take this away."
Referring to the prospect of an air strike on Iran, Mr Ahmadinejad said: "Talk of war is basically a propaganda tool. Why is there a need for a war? On Sunday the Iranian president said: "It's wrong to think that Iran and the US are walking toward war. " Yesterday, Ahmadinejad denied that Iran is smuggling weapons into Iraq to be used against American troops. "We think the military should seek an answer to its defeat in Iraq elsewhere," he added.
Mr Ahmadinejad's visit prompted large protests around UN headquarters and Columbia University, where the Iranian president spoke to a packed auditorium yesterday afternoon. New York's tabloids worked themselves into a fury over Ahmadinejad's presence in Manhattan with the Daily News declaring "the Evil has Landed" in its front page headline. Columbia University's invitation to Ahmadinejad had been criticised by politicians and Jewish groups, but the university refused to back down - unlike last year, when a similar visit was cancelled due to protests.
The university's president, Lee Bollinger, introduced Ahmadinejad by saying the Iranian leader behaved like a "petty and cruel dictator" before going on to criticise Iran's human rights record and foreign policy. He also lambasted Ahmadinejad for statements he had made on the Holocaust and Israel .
"You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated," Bollinger told Ahmadinejad about his Holocaust denial. "Will you cease this outrage?" Ahmadinejad said he simply wanted more research on the Holocaust. The Iranian president also described Bollinger's opening as "an insult to information and the knowledge of the audience here." He defended Tehran's right to have "a peaceful nuclear energy" and prompted sniggers from the audience when he claimed there were no homosexuals in Iran. The Iranian president is due to address the UN General Assembly tomorrow.