The president of the United Nations General Assembly, Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, will be attending a dinner in New York at which Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a featured guest, according to The Forward, a Jewish-American weekly newspaper published in New York City. Brockmann, a Catholic priest from Nicaragua who publicly criticizes the United States's anti-terror war in Iraq and Afghanistan, will attend the dinner on September 25th, an event which was organized by five American Christian organizations and will be co-hosted by the Iranian mission to the U.N.

The dinner, which will take place at the Grand Hyatt hotel in midtown Manhattan, is billed as centering around issues pertaining to the role of religion in tackling global challenges and fostering peace, and is being sponsored by the Mennonite Central Committee, the Quaker United Nations Office, the World Council of Churches, Religions for Peace and the American Friends Service Committee.

Norway's prime minister, Kjell Magne Bondevik, who also heads the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights, will attend.  The dinner will also serve as a fast-breaking evening meal for Ahmadinejad, who is observing the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. 

Ahmadinejad has openly called for the destruction of the State of Israel, hosting a conference called "The World Without Zionism" in October of 2005.  Iran's president, who vocally denies the Nazi genocide against the Jews during the Holocaust, has referred to the Jewish State as "criminal," "a disease," and "a dead rat," and issued a statement on Israel's 60th anniversary of independence, saying, "Those who think they can revive the stinking corpse of the usurping and fake Israeli regime by throwing a birthday party are seriously mistaken. Today, the reason for the Zionist regime's existence is questioned, and this regime is on its way to annihilation."