Iran holding Holocaust conference

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran, whose president has described the Holocaust as a “myth,” said Tuesday they will hold a conference to discuss the evidence that the Nazis committed genocide against the Jews in World War II.

The two-day conference scheduled for next week was initiated by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called the systematic killing of some 6 million Jews, which has been extensively researched and documented, a “myth” and “exaggerated.”

“The president simply asked whether an event called the Holocaust has actually taken place,” Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mohammadi as saying. “No rational response was ever given to Ahmadinejad’s questions,” he added, explaining the rationale for the conference.

The Iranian president has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” and the conference appeared to be part of Ahmadinejad’s public campaign against the Jewish state.

In a May interview, Ahmadinejad asked Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine “if the Holocaust didn’t take place, why then did this regime of occupation (the state of Israel) come about? Why do the European countries commit themselves to defending this regime?”

Mohammadi rejected any suggestion the conference would encourage anti-Semitism, calling discrimination against Jews a “Western phenomenon.” The proof of Iran’s lack of animosity toward Jews, he said, was Iran’s 25,000-strong Jewish community.

Mohammadi said the conference seeks to “provide an opportunity for scholars to offer their opinions in freedom.”

Tehran has announced plans for the conference several times. One such announcement came during a visit to Iran by United Nations chief Kofi Annan in September.

During his visit, Annan said an Iranian exhibition of cartoons denying the Holocaust, on display at the time, promoted hatred. The Iranians mounted the exhibit after a wave of anger and violence swept the Islamic world over the publication in a Danish newspaper of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

The two-day Holocaust conference, sponsored by the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s Institute for Political and International Studies, is scheduled for Sunday and Monday. Some 67 foreign researchers from 30 countries are scheduled to attend.