Rome - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad marked Tuesday his arrival in Italy - the first visit to a European nation since his 2005 election - with remarks against Israel which drew immediate condemnation.

"The European people have been subjected to most of the Zionists' damage and today the costs of this falsified regime, both the political and the economic, fall on the shoulders of Europe," Ahmadinejad said referring to Israel.

Italian Defence Minister Ignazio La Russa said the Iranian president's comments provoked "great concern."

"I believe that the language used by Ahmadinejad over the non- recognition of Israel, a member-state of the United Nations, and his negation of the suffering of a people stands against history and our common sentiments," La Russa was quoted as saying by the ANSA news agency.

The Iranian president was in Rome on Tuesday to attend a UN food conference, but his presence and that of another leader much criticized by the West, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, has sparked controversy.

Representatives of Italy's Jewish community distributed pamphlets at the Coliseum bearing Ahmadinejad's image with a "No Access" traffic sign and the words: "We don't want you here."

In a speech to delegates from some 50 countries at the UN Conference on World Food Security, Ahmadinejad lashed out against the "sometime-Satanic" policies of rich nations and the West that he said were to blame for world hunger.

"Is their goal supplying the expenditures of wars and occupations? Is their goal justifying the investments in new sources of energy in the depths of seas in the North Pole or in other regions," Ahmadinejad said.

The Iranian president, who began his speech with a Muslim prayer, also presented a set of proposals he said would help solve the food crisis, including expanding the rule of "ethical and humanistic values."

He also called for the need of what he described as "the coming to power of pure and monotheistic managers," an apparent reference to Islam and Muslims who believe in only one god, Allah.

Italian officials said no meetings were planned between Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Ahmadinejad, who was scheduled to leave Rome later Tuesday following an afternoon news conference at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO) Rome headquarters.

The three-day summit, hosted by the FAO, is aimed at winning donor pledges for urgent aid as well as forging an agreement to revive a 1996 pledge by a world leaders to halve the number of hungry people by 2015.

In an apparent reference to Ahmadinejad and Mugabe, the mouthpiece of Italy's Catholic bishops, Avvenire, cautioned delegates "not to let the focus and the debate shift from the food emergency towards the presence of some 'cumbersome' leaders who have arrived in Rome." (dpa)