Iranian Holocaust conference to be held in spring

30 January 2006

TEHRAN – A controversial Holocaust conference will be held in spring in Tehran, the news agency Fars on Sunday quoted Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid-Reza Assefi as saying.

The spokesman gave no exact date for what Tehran calls a “scientific seminar” on the Holocaust to clarify “the real dimensions of the Holocaust.”

Several Muslim as well as Western scholars, reportedly also German neo-Nazis, are supposed to attend the conference.

Iran on Sunday called on British Prime Minister Tony Blair to attend the conference.

“I suggest it would be good for Blair to attend the Holocaust seminar or send some articles,” Assefi told reporters in Teheran.

The spokesman spoke in reference to statements by Blair condemning the scheduled conference as “shocking, ridiculous, stupid.”

“Blair can hear hear (in Tehran) issues which he cannot hear over there (in London),” Assefi said.

Assefi has earlier blasted Blair’s comments as “blind fanaticism” and accused the West of trying “to block a scientific research on the Holocaust claims and efforts to search for the truth.”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently provoked international outrage after he called for the eradication of Israel, branded the Holocaust a “fairy tale” and demanded a relocation of Israel to Europe or America.

The Holocaust is the term generally applied to the mass extermination of six million Jews in Europe by Nazi Germany during World War Two.

Subject: German news