The speaker of the New York State Assembly is pressing the board that awarded architect Richard Rogers a $1.7 billion contract to redesign the Javits Center to investigate his role in hosting the founding meetings of a group of architects considering a boycott of Israel.

Sheldon Silver is also looking to squeeze Lord Rogers out of his role in redesigning the Silvercup Studio in Queens, a project estimated to be worth $1 billion.

In a letter sent yesterday to both Governor Pataki and the chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, Mr. Silver said that if reports are confirmed that Lord Rogers hosted meetings at his firm last month for the group Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, then his involvement in the Javits project should be “terminated.”

The letter from the speaker comes after Lord Rogers on Wednesday issued a public statement disassociating himself from the organization, citing his own concerns that some of its members have proposed a boycott of Israeli architects. A spokeswoman for Lord Rogers said earlier this week that he may support such a boycott in the future.

But Mr. Silver, like a growing number of other New York politicians and Jewish leaders, was unsatisfied with the architect’s statement on Wednesday. Mr. Silver, who helped write New York State’s original laws barring Albany from doing business with any person or entity that participates in a boycott of Israel, can command significant leverage over any proposed redesign of the convention center, not to mention the project in Queens. The state of New York has agreed to pay $350 billion for the Javits project and would also likely extend tax credits for the Silvercup Studios project.

“Lord Rogers’s clear and public association with this group undermines the deep-rooted friendship and strong economic partnership between New York and Israel that we have worked so hard to foster over the years,” the speaker wrote yesterday to the chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation, Charles Gargano.

In that letter he also said that the corporation’s support for Lord Rogers after his statement was “disturbing and disconcerting,” given that they had not yet investigated his role in hosting meetings of the anti-Israel organization. “The lack of accountability for what his actions have already suggested is nothing short of shameful,” Mr. Silver wrote.

A spokeswoman for the corporation, Jessica Copin, said yesterday that her boss was “satisfied with the statement.” Yesterday another spokesman for the corporation, Mark Weinberg, said, “Chairman Gargano reached out to Speaker Silver today. They had a good conversation and I expect they will talk again. I have no comment beyond what I just said.”

In an interview yesterday with The New York Sun, Mr. Silver said he was willing to use his leverage in the assembly to scrutinize and likely block not only the Javits Convention Center contract, but also a proposed renovation of Silvercup Studios. “Some of the Silvercup production will want extensions of tax credits. This is not something we are going to look kindly on if they are associated with Lord Rogers,” he said.

Mr. Silver also said he would urge his appointees on the Javits Convention Center Development Corporation to press for an investigation into Lord Rogers and Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine. He also said he was confident Governor Pataki would take a “personal interest” in the matter when he was back to work in his Albany offices.

Mr. Gargano yesterday also received a letter from the American Jewish Congress expressing concern about Lord Rogers’s association with the project. “Would an Israeli architect not be hired for sub-contracting work, even if he or she were the best possible applicant?” the group’s executive director, David Harris, wrote. “Would companies which also do work in Israel not have their products or materials selected?”

The uproar over Lord Rogers’s association with anti-Israel activists stemmed initially from British and trade press reports that in its inaugural meeting some 60 architects in London discussed boycotting both Israeli architects and construction companies employed in the construction of the country’s security barrier, but also barring Israeli architects from the International Union of Architects.

A statement issued last month from Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine said, “We hold all design and construction professionals involved in projects that appropriate land and natural resources from Palestinian territory to be complicit in social, political, and economic oppression and to be contrary to internationally acceptable professional ethics.”