In this interview Ahmadinejad promotes the release of Sarah Shoud as a humanaterian act and demands release of 8 iranian criminals in return

In an interview broadcast Sunday morning with Christiane Amanpour on ABC's "This Week," Mr. Ahmadinejad said that the Iranian government "took a humanitarian measure and released one of the three individuals who entered our borders," so "I believe it would not be misplaced to ask that the U.S. government should make a humanitarian gesture and release the Iranians who were illegally arrested and detained here in the United States."

And so Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's US media tour begins, only hours after he arrived in New York. The first interview was with Christiane Amanpour of ABC News's This Week:

President Ahmadinejad is off to the United Nations for his annual presentation to the General Assembly, so that means another round of interviews with US television networks. It's a low-risk strategy for Ahmadinejad, as the American interviewers do not usually bring more than two-dimensional questions, and this encounter with NBC News' Andrea Mitchell was no different. Rather than pushing the President on Iran's internal matters, Mitchell settled for a snapshot of the case of the three US hikers --- Ahmadinejad had released Sarah Shourd on "compassionate grounds" but was defiant over the continued imprisonment of Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal --- and got into a tangential discussion on the proposed Islamic cultural centre in New York and a general overview of President Obama and US politics. Ahmadinejad countered with assertions of Muslim goodwill (and thus his own) --- "Muslims do not hate Americans" --- while saying that a "Zionist minority" was limiting the President's options on US-Iranian relations.