The most astonishing statement out of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s mouth this afternoon at Columbia University: “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. We don’t have that in our country.”

He spent much of his time evading answers, giving long-winded answers even when he was asked to respond yes or no.
Yes or no, did he seek the destruction of Israel but he talked about determining the status of Israel through a referendum.

But the comment about homosexuals….. That’s what happens when you’ve got someone live.

I watched Ahmadinejad on CNN. The university’s president, Lee Bollinger, introduced him this way: “Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator.”

Bollinger had been ridiculed repeatedly for inviting Ahmadinejad and he was surprisingly harsh. It will be interesting to see what people will say now.

On Ahmadinejad’s denial of the Holocaust, Bollinger told him: “You are either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated.”

He might fool the uneducated, the university president said, but, “When you come to a place like this it makes you simply ridiculous.”

Today, Ahamdinejad, said instead: “Why is it that the Palestinian people are paying the price for an event they had nothing to do with?”

On Israel and Jews, he said that there were many Jews living secure lives in Iran and more along that line. In an earlier video conference with reporters — he in New York, the National Press Club in Washington D.C. — he was asked whether Iran and Israel could co-exist in peace.

“We do not recognize that regime because it is based on discrimination…occupation,” he said. “And it consistently threatens its neighbors. ”

“And they discriminate between people,” he said. “They kill people. They displace people. They kill young people in their own homes. How is it possible to recognize it?â€?

The reporters were more persistent than the Columbia audience, but that’s their job. Their questions didn’t always elicit answers either but they kept at it.

What about weapons that the U.S. military has accused Iran of smuggling into Iraq, surface to air missiles, Ahmadinejad was asked and he avoided an answer.

“Are those Iranian weapons going into Iraq?” he was pressed.

“Iraq’s security means our security,” Ahmadinejad answered.

“So is that confirming that those weapons are going in?”

“No,” he answered finally. “This does not exist.”

But he added: “Are you telling me that the U.S. military is defeated as a result of two or three weapons here and there?”

PHOTO: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, speaks at Columbia University. (AP Photo/Shannon Stapleton, Pool)