The questions began before President Bush’s helicopter even touched down in Lower Manhattan yesterday for a three-day visit marking the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly: Would they meet face to face? Even by chance? The “they” in question were Mr. Bush and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, one of Mr. Bush’s most prominent Middle Eastern foils. Mr. Ahmadinejad is scheduled to address the General Assembly just hours after Mr. Bush does today as the tense negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program continue.The United States has refused to join those talks until Iran suspends its nuclear enrichment program, something it has refused to do. Mr. Bush said flatly on Friday that he would not meet with Mr. Ahmadinejad at the United Nations this week — or any other week, anywhere else — if the Iranian leader did not first comply with his demands.Aides to Mr. Bush bristled yesterday at the notion that they were trying to avoid a chance run-in between Mr. Ahmadinejad and Mr. Bush in the United Nations hallways. Contending that they were giving no extra attention to the possible walking route of the Iranian delegation or the Iranian leader’s bathroom schedule, they said that to do so would only help to elevate the stature of a man they would rather diminish. “This is not Khrushchev and Kennedy taking a measure of one another for the first time,” said an administration official who would speak only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak freely on the matter. “We’re talking about the former mayor of Tehran here.”The official said it was possible that the two men could be in close proximity during a luncheon this afternoon that the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, is holding, and that “nobody’s going to body-block Ahmadinejad if he comes up with outstretched hand.”If anything, White House officials said they were surprised that so much was being made of a possible encounter. There was no such interest, they noted, when both men were at the United Nations last year.But Iran’s nuclear program is a major agenda item for Mr. Bush at the United Nations now. And Mr. Ahmadinejad’s regional influence and ability to rankle the White House have seemed only to have grown in the past year.
Photographs of Mr. Ahmadinejad
