AFP, New York, 21 Sept 2011 – Activists angry at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad established a ‘war room’ on Wednesday in the same hotel where the controversial leader is staying during his visit to New York.
The $700-a-night room in Manhattan’s ritzy Warwick Hotel has been decorated with anti-Ahmadinejad posters and converted into a media center where the activists are coordinating their protests.
‘We want to show him he is not welcome here,’ Nathan Carleton, a spokesman for an advocacy group called United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), told AFP in the hotel room.
‘We want him to see that the American people and New York do not appreciate someone who is working with Al-Qaeda and accused the US government of causing 9/11 to come here and enjoy his time in the city.’
UANI has been staging various protests against Ahmadinejad this week as he makes his annual visit to New York for the United Nations General Assembly.
In one such protest, three activists on bicycles wearing anti-Ahmadinejad T-shirts and towing billboards denouncing the Iranian leader as ‘Al-Qaeda’s Silent Partner’ were cycling near the hotel on Wednesday.
Iran has denied harboring Al-Qaeda militants, and conclusive evidence has never emerged of a link between Tehran and the extremists who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001.
Mideast experts also say that Iran’s Shiite Muslim leadership is unlikely to cooperate with the Sunni Muslim extremists of Al-Qaeda, who regard Shiites as heretical.
But in July the US Treasury Department accused Tehran of aiding an Al-Qaeda logistics network, and the United States has long considered Iran a state supporter of terrorism for its links to Hamas and Hezbollah.
Washington and Tehran have also sparred over Iran’s nuclear program. The United States and its allies accuse the Islamic republic of seeking to build an atomic bomb, a charge that Tehran denies.
UANI, which describes itself as a nonpartisan group dedicated to promoting sanctions against Iran, was founded in 2008 by former officials from the administrations of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
Besides its ‘bicycle billboards,’ the group plans to deliver Ahmadinejad a petition denouncing Iran’s nuclear weapons program, human rights abuses and alleged support of terrorism, Carleton said.
However, he admitted it would be difficult to hand Ahmadinejad the petition directly and said UANI would likely just give it to the receptionist at the Warwick Hotel.
Separately, Iranian-Americans are planning to hold a large rally against Ahmadinejad outside UN headquarters on Thursday.
Ahmadinejad is regularly greeted with protests during his visits to New York, in which he has often enraged Americans with statements such as his claim last year that the US government was behind the 9/11 attacks.