The UN may be welcoming Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but that doesn’t mean that New York lawmakers are happy about it.

A group of elected officials, led by Gov. Paterson, spoke out against Ahmadinejad today just as the Iranian president prepares to speak to the United Nations General Assembly.

Paterson was joined by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and other lawmakers in Midtown to protest Ahmadinejad’s regime during a news conference near the UN.

The governor said the group knows Ahmadinejad won’t listen to their pleas, but he said it’s important to speak out against world leaders he calls “divisive.”

Protesters had demonstrated on Sunday as Ahmadinejad arrived and another rally is planned for Thursday.

As protests raged outside the UN, Ahmadinejad claimed that Iran has been a bastion of freedom under his rule.

He insisted that political opponents are free to demonstrate in Iran, saying, “When we discuss the subject of freedoms and liberty it has to be done on a comparative basis and to keep in mind that democracy at the end of the day means the rule of the majority, so the minority cannot rule.”

In the Associated Press interview, Ahmadinejad also said the US must acknowledge that Iran is a world power.

“The United States’ administrations … must recognize that Iran is a big power,” he said. “Having said that, we consider ourselves to be a human force and a cultural power and hence a friend of other nations. We have never sought to dominate others or to violate the rights of any other country.

“Those who insist on having hostilities with us, kill and destroy the option of friendship with us in the future, which is unfortunate because it is clear the future belongs to Iran and that enmities will be fruitless.”

He also asserted that international nuclear regulators had never found proof that Iran is pursuing an atomic bomb.

“We are not afraid of nuclear weapons. The point is that if we had in fact wanted to build a nuclear bomb, we are brave enough to say that we want it. But we never do that. We are saying that the arsenal of nuclear bombs (worldwide) have to be destroyed as well,” he said.

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(Source: NY Post)