Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the controversial President of Iran, today used his visit to Rome for the UN summit on food prices and climate change to attack Israel's "criminal and terrorist Zionist regime", while also lambasting global capitalism.

In his speech to the forum he alleged that unnamed profiteering "forces" were driving up crude oil prices to further their "geopolitical aims".

"While the growth of consumption is lower than that of production and the market is full of oil, prices continue to rise and this situation is completely manipulated," he told the summit.

The blame lay with "some of the powerful international capitalists" who "artifically keep the price of oil and energy and consumption taxes high while encouraging the extraction of fuel from basic agricultrual products", he said in a reference to biofuel.

"While more than 25 per cent of the poor people of the world spend more than 75 per cent of their income on food, the imbalance between production and food consumption is becoming more severe," he told the summit. In the energy field, "hidden and unhidden hands are at work to control the prices mendaciously to pursue their political and economic aims".

He was flanked by armed security guards as he spoke. President Ahmadinejad's presence in Rome has aroused protests from Jewish groups, leftwing protesters and Iranian exiles. Protesters today climbed the Colosseum to throw down leaflets opposing his visit.

Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, has refused to meet President Ahmadinejad, and no other leaders attending the summit have offered to hold bilateral talks with him. Italy said that it was obliged to alloow him to enter the country because the summit is being held by the UN.

Before arriving in Rome from Tehran, the Iranian leader repeated his assertion that the Jewish state would soon disappear from the map, adding for good measure that the "Satanic power" of the United States faced destruction. "You should know that the criminal and terrorist Zionist regime which has 60 years of plundering, aggression and crimes in its file has reached the end of its work and will soon disappear off the geographical scene," he said.

Speaking to reporters on his arrival, he said that Europe was bearing the economic and political costs of a "false regime" of Zionists. He claimed that people liked his comments "because people will save themselves from the imposition of the Zionists. European peoples have suffered the greatest damage from Zionists and today the costs of this false regime, be they political or economic costs, are on Europe's shoulders". He did not however repeat these remarks in his summit address

President Ahmadinejad had asked for an audience with Pope Benedict, but the Vatican said all such requests had been turned down. It denied this amounted to a papal snub.

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