国际英语新闻：Iranian president defends 9/11 remarks

"Don't you think that that excuse needs to be revised?" he continued. "Don't you feel that if a fact-finding mission was present from the start to explore the true reason behind Sept. 11 that we would not see the catastrophes in Afghanistan and Iraq today? Why do you assume that all nations must accept what the U.S. government says?"

Ahmadinejad said he did not make any judgment about various theories about who sponsored the attacks, just voiced them.

"You can walk on the street here and ask the people of New York about Sept. 11 and you will see that everyone will at some point will bring up one of those three theories," that the attack plans came from the U.S. government, he said.

Some reporters in later questions tried to dispute that allegation.

In his speech at the opening of general debate at the United Nations, Ahmadinejad said, a terrorist group successfully crossed U.S. intelligence and security to carry 9/11 out, or "some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack," or it "was carried out by a terrorist group but the American government supported and took advantage of the situation."

Posing his question to the president, the reporter, clearly shaky in voice, said many New Yorkers were upset at the Iranian president's suggestion.

"Iran's loony leader sparked an angry exodus from the UN floor Thursday when he dredged up the discredited theory that the U.S. government was behind the Sept. 11 attacks," the popular tabloid the New York Daily News reported in Friday's editions.