World

Walkout during speech by Ahmadinejad

07:07 am on 24 September 2011

Delegates from more than 30 countries walked out of the United Nations on Thursday when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran unleashed another tirade against the West.

But the ABC reports some say the speech was less about upsetting the west and more to do with his weakened political position back home.

Mr Ahmadinejad has previously called the 9/11 attack a "suspect event" and a "big fabrication" used to justify the US war on terrorism.

He said he believes - as an engineer - the World Trade Center towers could not have been brought down by aircraft.

Mr Ahmadinejad has been widely condemned for using the address to brand the US killing of Osama Bin Laden a 9/11 cover-up.

He also used Thursday's address to accuse Western nations of ''weakening countries through military intervention and destroying their infrastructures, in order to plunder their resources by making them all the more dependent''.

British Prime Minister David Cameron hit back at Iran during his speech to the UN.

''They do everything they can to avoid the accountability of a free media,'' he said.