TEHRAN Iran
The dean of a northeastern Iranian university has invited U.S. President George W. Bush to address professors and students and answer their questions on human rights, terrorism and the Holocaust, state television reported Monday.
The invitation from Ferdowsi University came a week after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s controversial visit to New York, where he faced tough questioning and received a combative introduction from Columbia University’s president at the campus forum.
“The dean of Ferdowsi University has invited the U.S. president to address professors and students and answer their questions about human rights, terrorism and the Holocaust,” the television reported. The broadcast did not give further details including saying how or when the invitation was issued by the prestigious Iranian university in Mashhad.
Late last week before he left New York, Ahmadinejad invited Bush to speak at an Iranian university if the American leader ever traveled to the Islamic Republic. The hardline leader was in New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly.
Ahmadinejad’s appearance a week ago at Columbia University caused an uproar after a blistering introduction from university President Lee Bollinger who said Ahmadinejad was exhibiting “all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator” who was “brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated” for his denials of the Holocaust.
Bollinger’s lashing offended Iranians especially in regard to the region’s hospitality traditions that a host should be polite to a guest, no matter what he thinks of him.
