Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is here to attend the United Nations General Assembly, is to make a speech at Columbia University in New York Monday.
Ahmadinejad is due to begin his address at 1:30 pm. At least 600 people are expected to listen to his speech. Heavy security is seen inside and outside the school campus.
The arrival of Ahmadinejad has come across protests and criticism from U.S. critics due to his staunch stand to keep Iran's nuclear program, which the United States claims is used to make nuclear weapons.
The Iranian leader has previously called the Holocaust "a myth" and vowed to have Israel "wiped off the map."
Ahmadinejad wanted to lay a wreath at the World Trade Center site during his stay in New York, but his request was denied, New York City police officials said.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Monday that it would have been a travesty for Ahmadinejad to visit the site, known as Ground Zero.
"I think it would have been a travesty," Rice told cable TV channel CNBC in an interview. "This is somebody who is the president of a country that is probably the greatest sponsor -- state sponsor -- of terrorism."
Ahmadinejad has visited New York before. His scheduled address to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday will be his third time attending the New York meeting in three years.
Washington accuses Tehran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of its civil nuclear program, and of fueling violence in Iraq by providing weapons and training to anti- American militants. Iran denies the charges.
Ahmadinejad said in a CBS television interview broadcast on Sunday night that Iran did not need nuclear weapons and his country was not heading for war with the United States.
Asked whether Iran and the United States were heading toward conflict over Tehran's nuclear ambitions, he said: "It's wrong to think that Iran and the U.S. are walking toward war. Who says so? Why should we go to war? There is no war in the offing."
Source: Xinhua
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