The president was scheduled to speak to the United Nations Thursday after the Iran Times had gone to press.
He was greeted before his arrival by David Letterman, who told his TV audience Monday night that “everybody gets excited for the General Assembly” because of Ahmadi-nejad’s appearances.
“He likes to get up there and start ranting and raving and he was bragging earlier today about one thing-Iran now leads the world in captured hikers.”
Lettermen said, “Here’s a guy who has stated publicly, openly and with a certain measure of pride that he hates Jews and gays. Boy, is this guy in the wrong town.”
But the usual unwelcome party for Ahmadi-nejad seems a bit dimmer than in past years. The New York Post has not greeted him with one nasty front page after another. The Jewish establishment says it isn’t planning any protests against his presence. Some Iranian groups will march, but it doesn’t appear to be as big a protest as in past years.
Argentina’s President Christina Kirchner’s office has said she will call on Iran in her UN speech to hand over eight Iranians wanted for questioning in the 1994 Buenos Aires bombing. She made the same point last year.
It may be that in his seventh annual appearance on the UN stage, New Yorkers are bit jaded and even bored by Ahmadi-nejad. Basically, he brings the same routine each year. It isn’t being freshened with new gimmicks.
He is speaking to the UN, giving back-to-back interviews to American reporters, holding a session with Iranian expats, appearing at a news conference Friday and, this year, will add a dinner with students from 12 US universities.
In his first interview Tuesday, Ahmadi-nejad repeated what he said one week earlier-that the jailed American hikers would be freed in a few days. He did not address the core issue that the Judiciary in Iran is repeating-that he has no say whatsoever in Judicial matters.
“I did say within the next few days, and I still say the same thing. God willing, they will be released very soon,” he told ABC Tuesday.
“We act upon whatever we say. And if we don’t want to act, we won’t say it. We didn’t make this decision under pressure. It’s a humanitarian decision-although a lot of people are detained in American prisons inside the United States, in Europe, on ships. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who haven’t had the opportunity of a fair trial.”
He didn’t say where he got the idea that people are held on shipboard prisons and or can be detained without trial in the United States.