An influential security group with White House connections is campaigning to stop a posh New York hotel from hosting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is scheduled to address the United Nations later this month, The Post has learned.
United Against Nuclear Iran — a bipartisan group whose founders include Obama special Afghanistan envoy Richard Holbrooke and Middle East aide Dennis Ross — says the InterContinental The Barclay New York hotel is housing Ahmadinejad and the Iran delegation during the 64th UN General Assembly beginning next Tuesday.
The group said businesses in New York shouldn’t be taking “blood money” from an evil leader who sponsors terrorism, seeks nuclear arms, and dreams of destroying Israel.
“United Against Nuclear Iran has learned that the InterContinental The Barclay New York has agreed to host President Ahmadinejad and the Iranian delegation [during the UN visit],” UANI President Mark Wallace wrote in a stinging Sept. 4 letter to Barclay New York general manager Leland Lewis, a copy of which was obtained by The Post.
“By accommodating the Iranian delegation, the InterContinental not only endorses President Ahmadinejad’s election, but also turns a blind eye to the regime’s flagrant violations of human rights and its commitment to illegally developing nuclear weapons,” Wallace wrote.
“I ask you to consider whether the profits for short-term economic gains to be made by hosting the Iranian delegation outweigh the grave implications of supporting a terrorist state,” added Wallace, who previously worked for the American Mission to the United Nations and the Department of Homeland Security under George W. Bush.
He urged the hotel, located on East 48th Street between Lexington and Park avenues, to refuse to host Ahmadinejad and “join the international community in condemning Iran’s illegal nuclear weapons program and its disregard for human rights.”
An employee who identified herself as a Barclay manager declined comment on whether the Iranian leader would bunk there, citing company policy.
“We cannot say who’s staying or not staying here,” said the woman, who declined to give her full name.
The Barclay hosted Ahmadinejad during a prior UN visit, as has The Grand Hyatt.
This will be Ahmadinejad’s first major visit to the West since his disputed re-election in June — which prompted massive demonstrations and a crackdown by Iranian security forces that killed dozens of protesters.
The controversy comes on the heels of the furor over reports of Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy possibly planning to set up camp in Englewood, NJ, during his UN stay.
Khadafy provoked outrage for his prison-release greeting of Abdel Basset al-Megrahi — the convicted bomber in the attack on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, which killed 270 people. Many victims were from the New York region.