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PRESIDENT Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is trying to blunt international outrage by focusing attention instead on tomorrow's scheduled execution of a woman in the US.

Teresa Lewis "is to be executed . . . while her physician believes that she was suffering from mental disorder at the time of her husband's murder - but nobody pays any attention to this issue", the Iranian President complained during an interview in New York.

Mr Ahmadinejad compared the lack of protests in the case of Lewis, 41, a grandmother from Virginia, to the "Western media storm" over that of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the Iranian woman sentenced to death for adultery.

"There are 3.7 million internet pages about this woman. Her case is not yet final but Iran is being heavily attacked," he told an Islamic audience in New York. "Western media are propaganda agents who continuously speak about democracy and human rights though their slogans are sheer lies."