(News.com.au) ISRAELI President Shimon Peres criticised a US university for hosting Iran's president, comparing the event to attempts to engage Adolf Hitler in dialogue before World War Two.
During his speech at Columbia University in New York, President Mahmoud Amhadinejad attacked Israel's treatment of the Palestinians and denied his country's nuclear program was aimed at building atomic weapons.
Mr Ahmadinejad has come under international criticism for saying that Israel should be "wiped off the map" and has questioned whether the Nazi Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews actually took place.
Introducing the Iranian president, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger said Mr Ahmadinejad behaved as a "petty and cruel dictator" and that his Holocaust denials suggested he was either "brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated".