Jewish leaders in New York are spurning a request from the Council on Foreign Relations to meet with the president of Iran when he arrives for the U.N. General Assembly.The vice president for communications at the Council on Foreign Relations, Lisa Shields, confirmed yesterday that President Ahmadinejad has been invited to address members of the council.

“Our invitation to Ahmadinejad is no different than our invitation to other heads of states during the General Assembly,” she said. “We have had an invitation out over the years to the Iranians as they come to the United Nations. This year they accepted.”

“I think this is outrageous,” the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Malcolm Hoenlein, said. “Ahmadinejad has proven that dialogue serves no useful purpose except to give him legitimacy and recognition. How can you have a dialogue with someone who says he is guided by the hidden imam who died in the ninth century?”

Mr. Hoenlein added that he declined the council’s invitation. His organization is organizing a protest against Mr. Ahmadinejad.

The national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, said that initially the Iranian president was invited to a dinner at the council.

“This was over the top,” Mr. Foxman, who also declined the council’s invitation to meet with Mr. Ahmadinejad, said. “It’s one thing to invite him to hear his views. But it’s something else to break bread with him.”

Mr. Foxman added, “He has a right to address the United Nations. Anything beyond that is a courtesy he has not earned. For someone who publicly and continuously denies the Holocaust, and for someone who continuously threatens to wipe off the face of the map Israel, a member of the United Nations, is certainly not one with whom decent people should dialogue.”

The Iranian leader said last month that he was backing the U.N.-brokered cease-fire between Israel and the Iranian-funded Hezbollah until the Jewish state could be destroyed. Beyond his hostility to Jews and Israel, Mr. Ahmadinejad has overseen a purge of Iran’s universities.

NYS