TEHRAN -- Iranian officials and newspapers put political differences aside Wednesday and reacted with outrage over the "insults" showered upon President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his visit to New York.

Before a speech to Columbia University Tuesday, Ahmadinejad was introduced by the university's president Lee Bollinger as a "petty and cruel dictator" and then endured jeering during his talk.

A columnist in the reformist Etemad newspaper wrote: "Although reformists disagree with Mr. Ahmadinejad ... an insult to his legal personality abroad is in fact an insult to our country as a legal entity."

It added: "The best thing the president could do against such a blatant insult would have been to walk out."

The president's subsequent address to the UN General Assembly Tuesday bore all the hallmarks of a typical Ahmadinejad speech. The hardline press lauded him for scoring points over Iran's arch foes the United States and Israel.

The government daily Iran headline hailed "the Victory of Iranian Logic in New York." The hardline Kayhan spoke of "Iran's influential words among the elite of the United States."

Ahmadinejad's media advisor Ali Akbar Javanfekr was quoted by the ISNA news agency as saying: "The effective and enlightening policy of the president in interacting with US public opinion should continue."

The central committee of Iran's 25,000 strong Jewish community, which has in the past expressed unease over Ahmadinejad's stance on the Holocaust, added its voice to the condemnation of his hostile reception in New York.

"Iranian Jews strongly condemn such impoliteness and willfulness, as such behavior has targeted Iran's president who legally represents Iranians," it said in a statement.

Even reformist former culture minister Ataollah Mohajerani, who served under president Mohammad Khatami before being forced to resign for his perceived liberalism, gave his wholehearted support to Ahmadinejad.

"The Columbia University head's statements before Mr. Ahmadinejad's speech were indeed surprising. One does not talk to a guest like this," he told the Fars news agency.

Mohajerani's only complaint about Ahmadinejad was that he did not wear his trademark casual jacket.

"The ambience of the hall was like a funeral and the president's grey suit completed the scene. I wish he had sported that white jacket of his."

Twenty-five MPs sent a letter to foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki voicing "repulsion" at the scenes and demanding that measures be taken over the president's future presence at such conferences, the Mehr news agency reported.

The Columbia president's introduction was a rare taste of public criticism for the president. He had been taunted with shouts of "Death to the Dictator" and barracked during a stormy address to the Amir Kabir University in Tehran in 2006, but nothing of the sort has taken place here since then.

Most dealings in Iranian politics - even between foes - are marked by the utmost politeness, with criticism sometimes hidden beneath an elaborate veil of Persian rhetoric.

State television has limited its coverage of the president's visit to exhaustive excerpts from his speeches, with no mention of the sometimes rough reception that he has received from his US hosts.

The day before the Columbia controversy, there was ample mention on all news bulletins to a dinner speech that Ahmadinejad gave to a gathering of expatriate Iranians, who appeared to give him the warmest of welcomes. But Bollinger's extraordinary attack on the president did not merit a single mention. Ahmadinejad's assertion that "there are no homosexuals" in Iran was shown in late-night news bulletins Tuesday. -Agencies