New York:
US President Barack Obama on Friday slammed "hateful," "inexcusable" and "offensive" remarks by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about the September 11 attacks in 2001.
Ahmadinejad sparked outrage in the United States on Thursday and a partial walkout in the UN General Assembly chamber when he said in a speech that most people believe the US government staged the attacks.
"It was offensive, it was hateful," Obama said in a television interview with the BBC Persia service, according to an excerpt released by the White House.
Obama said it was particularly offensive for Ahmadinejad to make such a statement in Manhattan, just north of the Ground Zero site of the felled twin towers of the World Trade Center.
The president described the site as a place "where families lost their loved ones, people of all faiths, all ethnicities who see this as the seminal tragedy of this generation -- for him to make a statement like that was inexcusable."
About 3,000 people died in the attacks by Al-Qaeda operatives who hijacked jets and flew them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.
A fourth plane, believed to be headed for Washington, crashed short of its target in Pennsylvania.
Ahmadinejad sparked outrage in the United States on Thursday and a partial walkout in the UN General Assembly chamber when he said in a speech that most people believe the US government staged the attacks.
"It was offensive, it was hateful," Obama said in a television interview with the BBC Persia service, according to an excerpt released by the White House.
Obama said it was particularly offensive for Ahmadinejad to make such a statement in Manhattan, just north of the Ground Zero site of the felled twin towers of the World Trade Center.
The president described the site as a place "where families lost their loved ones, people of all faiths, all ethnicities who see this as the seminal tragedy of this generation -- for him to make a statement like that was inexcusable."
About 3,000 people died in the attacks by Al-Qaeda operatives who hijacked jets and flew them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.
A fourth plane, believed to be headed for Washington, crashed short of its target in Pennsylvania.
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