ALBANY – The state Republican Party is asking for an investigation into a claim by a former Wall Street executive that Attorney General Eliot Spitzer threatened him in a private conversation, an accusation Mr. Spitzer has denied.

Last week John Whitehead, the appointed chairman of the state Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal in which he accused Mr. Spitzer of having threatened him by telephone eight months before. The conversation wasn’t taped and there were apparently no witnesses, but Mr. Whitehead cited what he said were his own notes of the conversation.

He quoted Mr. Spitzer as saying: “I will be coming after you. You will pay the price” for publicly criticizing Mr. Spitzer’s investigation of an ally, insurance magnate Maurice Greenberg. Mr. Spitzer has accused Mr. Greenberg of misleading investors of American International Group Incorporated through improper accounting.

Mr. Greenberg has suffered an embarrassing fall from AIG amid widening federal and state probes of accounting irregularities at the world’s largest property and casualty insurance company.

Now the state Republican Party chairman, Stephen Minarik, is calling on the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office to investigate the claim against Mr. Spitzer, the only announced Democratic candidate for governor in 2006.

Mr. Minarik, who called the allegation “serious and troubling,” also claimed the attorney general should be charged with coercion.

“No threats were issued,” a spokesman for Mr. Spitzer, Darren Dopp, said.

Mr. Spitzer has earned a national reputation for forcing reforms on Wall Street.

“We have not received a letter and there is no investigation,” a spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, Sherry Hunter, said.

The state GOP executive director, Ryan Moses, said Mr. Whitehead’s accusation is part of a pattern. He cited cases in which a reporter and a spokesman for a Republican congresswoman said Mr. Spitzer tried to intimidate them.

Mr. Whitehead has refused to respond to requests for interviews.

Mr. Whitehead is a supporter of Mr. Greenberg. Mr. Greenberg’s nonprofit Starr Foundation has given the single largest donation – $25 million – to the foundation in charge of building the World Trade Center memorial, a pledge made months earlier. The foundation has raised just over $100 million. Mr. Greenberg is on the board of directors of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and Whitehead is chairman of that board.

Mr. Spitzer and others have questioned the effectiveness of the development board. This month, Mr. Spitzer called for the Starr Foundation to investigate questionable stock sales 30 years ago that benefited Greenberg and other insiders.

“Mr. Minerik and his friends always criticize the attorney general’s efforts to combat corporate fraud,” Mr. Dopp said. “They always stick up for their corporate pals. This is just another example of that.”

“We’re just going to see more of this – friends of Mr. Greenberg taking on Eliot,” Mr. Dopp added. “Mr. Greenberg is on a mission to return some manner of criticism toward Eliot as the person responsible for his downfall. They are free to say what they want to say, we only take exception to some of the characterizations, which were inaccurate.”