NEW YORK (AP) — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday dismissed threats of military action against Iran's nuclear program, asserting that his country's project to enrich uranium is only for peaceful purposes and disputing that the country worries at all about an Israeli attack to destroy Iran's nuclear capacity.

Speaking to a group of editorial leaders, the first full day of his visit to New York for the annual U.N. General Assembly, Ahmadinejad said it was not too late for dialogue with the United States to resolve differences.

He also said that Iran is neutral in the Syrian civil war, and denied that Tehran is providing weapons or training to the government of President Bashar Assad. "We like and love both sides, and we see both sides as brothers," he said. He referred to the conflict in Syria as "tribal" fighting and said that international "meddling from the outside has made the situation even harder." He refused to say whether Iran would accept a government not led by the Assad regime, which for years has been Iran's closest ally in the Middle East.