President Barack Obama blasted his Iranian counterpart Friday for what he called offensive and hateful remarks about the September 11 attacks.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed the United States for the 2001 terrorist attacks, an accusation that triggered a walkout Thursday by several United Nations delegates.

“Well, it was offensive. It was hateful,” Obama said in part of an interview with BBC Persian released by the White House.

“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,” Obama said.

Obama said Ahmadinejad’s comments stand in contrast to the sympathy expressed by the Iranian people in the aftermath of the attacks.

“And it just shows once again sort of the difference between how the Iranian leadership and this regime operates and how I think the vast majority of the Iranian people, who are respectful and thoughtful, think about these issues,” Obama said.

British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said at the United Nations on Friday that Ahmadinejad’s “bizarre” remarks were meant to distract attention from Iranian issues that generate media headlines.

Ahmadinejad delivered a fiery speech before the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday, criticizing Washington, capitalism and the world body itself.

Though incendiary statements from Ahmadinejad are nothing new, tension in the hall grew as the Iranian leader recounted various conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks.

“Some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack,” Ahmadinejad told the General Assembly.

He followed with the claim that the attacks were aimed at reversing “the declining American economy and its scripts on the Middle East in order to save the Zionist regime. The majority of the American people, as well as most nations and politicians around the world, agree with this view.”

That appeared to be the last straw for many of the diplomats. Representatives from the United States, Britain, Sweden, Australia, Belgium, Uruguay and Spain walked out while Ahmadinejad asserted that the U.S. government was involved in the attacks or allowed them to happen as an excuse to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

(Source: CNN)