Ahmadinejad sparked outrage in the United States on Thursday and a partial walkout in the UN General Assembly chamber when he said in a speech that most people believe the US government staged the attacks.
"It was offensive, it was hateful," Obama said in a television interview with the BBC Persia service, according to an excerpt released by the White House.
Obama said it was particularly offensive for Ahmadinejad to make such a statement in Manhattan, just north of the Ground Zero site of the felled twin towers of the World Trade Center.
The president described the site as a place "where families lost their loved ones, people of all faiths, all ethnicities who see this as the seminal tragedy of this generation -- for him to make a statement like that was inexcusable."
About 3,000 people died in the attacks by Al-Qaeda operatives who hijacked jets and flew them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.
A fourth plane, believed to be headed for Washington, crashed short of its target in Pennsylvania.
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