The President of Iran has arrived in New York on a controversial charm offensive to convince the American people that they have nothing to fear from his country.

In an interview broadcast on American television yesterday, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Iran was neither building a nuclear bomb nor headed to war with the United States.

The interview was taped in Iran last week, part of the Iranian leader's preparations to appeal directly to US voters over the heads of their leaders, amid rising tension at diplomatic levels and talk of war.

Before leaving Iran, Mr Ahmadinejad said that the American people had been denied “correct information” and that his visit would give them a chance to hear a different voice, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Today the Iranian president is due to speak at Columbia University in New York, and tomorrow he will address the General Assembly of the United Nations, his third such speech in three years. He had hoped to lay a wreath at the site of the September 11 bombings, but this was blocked by city officials on security grounds.

Yesterday civic leaders and elected officials demonstrated outside Columbia, and the protests were today expected to spread to the United Nations.

One protester, New York state Assemblyman Dov Hikind, said: "He should be arrested when he comes to Columbia University, not invited to speak, for God’s sake.”

Columbia’s invitation to such a controversial figure, who has denied the Holocaust and called for Israel to be "wiped off the map", has been criticised by politicians and religious groups, but the university has not backed down - unlike last year, when a similar visit was cancelled.

The university's president, Lee Bollinger, has promised that before he allows the Iranian leader to speak he will subject him to tough questioning on subjects such as human rights, the Holocaust and Iran’s nuclear programme.

Relations are poor between Washington and Tehran. America says that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons and accuses it of helping Shia militias in Iraq to attack US troops - claims that Iran denies.

“Well, you have to appreciate we don’t need a nuclear bomb. We don’t need that. What need do we have for a bomb?” Mr Ahmadinejad said in the interview with the CBS news programme 60 Minutes that was taped in Iran on Thursday.

“In political relations right now, the nuclear bomb is of no use. If it was useful it would have prevented the downfall of the Soviet Union.”

Times Recommends

• Would you live on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall?
• Wish you were here, says Iraq tourist board
• Russian policeman’s corruption plea to Putin