UNITED NATIONS – The self-described “only representative of a quote-unquote rogue state in America” – or the Syrian ambassador to Washington, Imad Moustapha – spent almost two hours Tuesday night talking to students and faculty at Columbia University about his country’s relationship with America, sometimes slipping into heated rhetoric.

“It is so important to continue repeating the same message,” he told The New York Sun. “Syria is not an enemy to the United States. If there are certain elements in the United States that regard Syria as a hostile nation, we either should engage with them and explain to them that it is untrue, or we should tell the American public opinion that they should not listen to these elements.”

Some of the “elements” to which Mr. Moustapha referred attended his Tuesday talk at Columbia’s Roone Arledge Auditorium, which was part of the university’s Toward Reconciliation lecture series.

A student who presented himself as Lebanese-born questioned the ambassador about Lebanese held in Syrian prisons. In response, Mr. Moustapha accused the student of being part of “certain political parties in Lebanon.” When yarmulke-wearing Ari Gardner asked about the massacre at the Syrian city of al-Hama, the ambassador went on a tirade about perceived Israeli atrocities against Palestinian Arabs.

For almost two hours, Mr. Moustapha tried his best to convince his small audience that his country could become an American ally. The more sinister allegations against Syria are distributed by an ominous lobby working on behalf of “one powerful country.”

Afterward, Mr. Moustapha told the Sun that no meeting has been scheduled between the U.N. investigator Serge Brammertz and top Syrian officials, including President Assad.

According to a report Mr. Brammertz gave at the Security Council on March 15, he reached a “common understanding” with top Syrian officials about U.N. investigators’ access to officials and material in Damascus, possibly including the president. “That understanding will be tested in the upcoming months,” the Belgian investigator wrote in his report.

“We have agreed to fully support this investigation,” Mr. Moustapha told the Sun on Tuesday. But when asked if meetings with top officials or the president were planned, he said, “It hasn’t been set up yet.”

Mr. Moustapha’s presentation was accompanied by a slide show of Syrian monuments and faces. It began with a nostalgic look at Syrian-American relations of the past, predating the American invasion of Iraq. It ended with a shot of Mr.Moustapha with President Bush at the White House.

Mr. Moustapha, who stressed his academic credentials as a computer science professor, said he plans to give seven to nine public events this month.

It is easy to pass judgment while surrounded by American comforts, he told his listeners. After the lecture, he said he would go to a nice New York restaurant to “wine and dine.” But he asked audience members to imagine the hardships suffered by Syrians living under Israeli occupation in the Golan Heights.

“This administration has never forgiven us for our principled position on the war in Iraq,” Mr. Moustapha’s said in an attempt to explain why Secretary of State Rice said his country is behind much of the trouble in the region.

One student asked why Syria for decades has been on Washington’s list of states supporting terrorism. Mr. Moustapha replied that it was due to the influence “one particular country in the Middle East” – Israel – holds in Congress and because its lobbyists work “against the interests of the United States” and are “not even supporting Israel itself.”

When the moderator, history professor Richard Bulliet, noted that the terror list is not compiled by Congress, but rather by the State Department,” Mr. Moustapha quickly conceded the point. “Let’s not go into details,” he said.

Questions about Syria’s relations with Lebanon, the human rights situation in the country, the history of peace negotiations with Israel, its relations with Hezbollah, and the infiltration of terrorists through the border with Iraq were explained away in similar fashion.