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21 February 2006
TEHRAN – Iran on Tuesday said the three-year jail sentence imposed by Austria on the British writer David Irving for denying the Holocaust clearly showed the “Western paradox” on freedom of expression.
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the West on the one hand claims freedom of expression but on the other, implements the opposite in practice.
He said that during his talks in Brussels on Monday in the European Parliament “the deputies were not even willing to open this discussion.”
“We do not understand why the West so desperately insists on having committed this crime and killed exactly six million (Jews),” Mottaki said.
“And nobody (in the European Parliament) gave a reply on why the Muslims should pay the price for it,” the foreign minister added.
Iran plans to hold a conference in spring in Tehran on “clarifying the real extent of the Holocaust”.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has on several occasions termed the Holocaust as a “fairy tale” and called on an international research on “finding the truth” about the Second World War genocide.
DPA
Subject: German news