NEW YORK-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sat down with 300 religious and political leaders Thursday night for a dinner at a midtown Manhattan hotel that drew condemnation and protests but proved to be far less an event than advertised. What had been promised as a dialogue on the ways religion can contribute to solving global problems turned into an evening of polite speech-making in which criticism of Ahmadinejad for his bellicose statements on the Holocaust and Israel was tempered by calls for the importance of bridge-building and reconciliation.