BBC News with Iain Purdon
President Obama has condemned as inexcusable comments by the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, suggesting that the US government was behind the September 11th attacks. President Obama drew a contrast between Mr Ahmadinejad's remarks and the expressions of sympathy from ordinary Iranians at the time. Mr Obama was speaking in an interview with the BBC Persian service.
"It was offensive. It was hateful. And particularly for him to make the statement here in Manhattan, just a little north of Ground Zero, 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."
President Ahmadinejad says his country is open for dialogue over its nuclear programme. He made the comments at the UN General Assembly in New York. Iran says its nuclear programme is peaceful, but Western countries suspect that it's secretly developing nuclear weapons. Jon Leyne reports.
President Ahmadinejad has suggested a meeting between Iran and the European Union representative Catherine Ashton in October. He talked about Iranian preconditions, though it's not clear specifically what he was referring to. The first topic is likely to be a fuel-swap deal negotiated a year ago, under which Iran would ship out stocks of enriched uranium in return for fuel for Tehran research reactor. That was originally meant as a confidence-building measure, leading to more substantive talks. But the deal was never implemented with each side blaming the other, and there's not much sign new negotiations will be any more constructive.