With friends like these...

By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad weighed in on the US presidential election today, noting that only one of the candidates supports restoring diplomatic contact with Iran.

In response to a question from an American student about whether he supports Democratic nominee Barack Obama or Republican John McCain, Ahmadinejad did not explicitly name Obama but said: “The American government 28 years ago decided on its own to cut its ties with Iran . . .We do prefer to have relations, whereas one of the candidates in this election would prefer that.”

Ahmadinejad, who met with about 400 American students on the sidelines of United Nations meetings in New York, was quick to say that Iranians “don’t interfere with the domestic affairs of the United States.”

But he went on to offer a litany of advice for the next US president, which included ending US military interventions around the world.

“The second thing the next president of the United States must do is to fix ties with Iran,” he said, to applause from the students, who listened to him through an interpreter on headphones in a conference room of the Hyatt Hotel.

Ahmadinejad side-stepped questions about why homosexuals had been executed in Iran and gave conflicting statements on whether the UN’s nuclear watchdog had given Iran’s nuclear program a clean bill of health. But he repeatedly said he was willing to restore ties with the United States.

“I have said that I am ready to meet with the authorities of the United States in any country of the world,” he said. “Pick a country. And we’ll walk the street together. Let’s see what the people really think of us,” he said, alluding to his perception of his own popularity outside the United States.

Ahmadinejad, who himself is up for re-election in Iran in June 2009, sounded like he was campaigning today.

“I love you all,” he told the audience, who included students from North Central College of Naperville, Illinois, State University of New York at Old Westbury, and Chestnut Hill Academy, an all boys elementary and high school in Philadelphia. “I really feel close to all of you…. I feel I am with very old friends.”