April 17, 2008	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 10, 1429

TEHRAN, April 16 Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday reaffirmed his doubts about the 9/11 attacks on the United States, describing the strikes as a “suspect event”.

“Four or five years ago a suspect event took place in New York,” Mr Ahmadinejad said in a speech to a public rally in the holy city of Qom broadcast live on state television.

“A building collapsed and they said that 3,000 people had been killed, whose names were never published.”

“Under this pretext they (the United States) attacked Afghanistan and Iraq and since then a million people have been killed,” he said.

This was the third time in over a week that Mr Ahmadinejad has publicly raised doubts about the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington believed by the US to have been carried out by Al Qaeda militants.

He first raised the question at a ceremony on April 8, Iran’s national day marking its controversial nuclear programme.

A day later, he expressed his doubts during an address at a shrine in the northeastern city of Mashhad, one of Iran’s most sacred sites.

Mr Ahmadinejad did not say who he believed was behind the 9/11 attacks. On April 8, he questioned how the two planes could have evaded surveillance to crash into the World Trade Centre.

At the time, the government of Iran’s then reformist president Mohammad Khatami had condemned the attacks.

However, some newspapers have occasionally described the attacks as a conspiracy that was hatched by the White House to justify its eventual attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr Ahmadinejad also reaffirmed on Wednesday his determination to change the international order.

“We have two missions,” he proclaimed. “To construct Iran and change the global situation. It is impossible to reach the summits of progress without changing the corrupt and unjust order of the world.”—AFP