That was the response when the Iranian Mission to the United Nations asked city, state and federal officials if Holocaust-denying Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could lay a wreath at Ground Zero during his visit next week.
At a Sept. 6 meeting with the NYPD, Secret Service and Port Authority – five days before this year’s emotional 9/11 ceremony – the Iranian Mission was told no one is allowed in the pit because it’s a live construction site and dangerous.
As for Ahmadinejad, who is arriving Sunday to address the U.N. General Assembly, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, says his country is giving “lethal” support to Iraqi militias.
Speaking yesterday in London, Petraeus said evidence shows the Axis of Evil member, which sponsors Hezbollah, listed by the State Department as a terrorist group, is training militias and giving them weapons – including rockets and especially deadly improvised explosive devices that have killed many American troops.
According to recent reports, EFPs – explosively formed penetrators – accounted for 18 percent of U.S. and allied troops’ combat deaths in Iraq in the last quarter of 2006. And intelligence reports point to Iran’s role in providing them.
But for a few hours yesterday, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly had City Hall and civic and religious leaders reeling with his remarks that talks were under way on a possible Ahmadinejad visit.
“They have expressed an interest in having the president do that [visit Ground Zero],” Kelly said at a news conference. “We are engaging in conversation with them right now as to that possibility. . . It is something we are prepared to handle if, in fact, it does happen.”
In a terse clarification hours later, Kelly spokesman Paul Browne set the record straight.
“A request earlier this month to permit a visit by Iranian President Ahmadinejad to Ground Zero during the United Nations General Assembly was rejected in a meeting which included NYPD, Secret Service and Port Authority officials,” his statement said.
“Requests for the Iranian president to visit the immediate area would also be opposed by the NYPD on security grounds.”
According to sources, City Hall had quickly and decisively intervened.
“Obviously, it caught everyone off guard,” one source said. “It was dealt with swiftly.”
The source noted itineraries for U.N. leaders aren’t ever the concern of City Hall – and that it might not have even known about the Sept. 6 request. The source noted that Kelly, too, may have been caught off guard by a radio reporter’s question that prompted the reply – and that Kelly answered in general terms.
But when it became clear the remarks had touched off a firestorm, the mayor himself stepped in and spoke to Kelly.
They both quickly realized “it was not going to happen,” this source said. “I think everyone got on the same page quickly.”
In December 2005, Ahmadinejad raised an international furor when he described the Holocaust as “a myth.”
“They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the prophets,” Ahmadinejad said.
New York pols were outraged at the prospect of the Iranian stepping on perhaps the city’s most hallowed ground.
“It is unacceptable for Iranian President Ahmadinejad, who refuses to renounce and end his own country’s support of terrorism, to visit the site of the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil in our nation’s history,” said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani called the idea “outrageous.”
“This is a man who has made threats against America and Israel, is harboring [Osama] Bin Laden’s son and other al Qaeda leaders, is shipping arms to Iraqi insurgents and is pursuing the development of nuclear weapons,” he said.
White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said an Ahmadinejad visit to the World Trade Center site “is a matter for the City of New York, but it seems more than odd that the president of a country that is a state sponsor of terror would visit Ground Zero.”
Additional reporting by Cathy Burke