UNITED NATIONS | Thu Sep 23, 2010 4:18pm EDT

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the United Nations on Thursday most people believe the U.S. government was responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001, prompting the U.S. delegation to leave in protest.

In his speech to the General Assembly, Ahmadinejad said it was mostly U.S. government officials who believed a terrorist group was behind the suicide hijacking attacks that brought down New York’s World Trade Center and hit the Pentagon.

Another theory, he said, was “that some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy, and its grips on the Middle East, in order to save the Zionist regime.”

“The majority of the American people as well as most nations and politicians around the world agree with this view,” Ahmadinejad told the 192-nation assembly.

The U.S. and several European delegations left shortly after Ahmadinejad made the remarks.

(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Peter Cooney)