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Iran opens holocaust conference { December 11 2006 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://news.bostonherald.com/international/view.bg?articleid=171475http://news.bostonherald.com/international/view.bg?articleid=171475
Iran opens Holocaust conference
By Associated Press
Monday, December 11, 2006 - Updated: 09:12 AM EST
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran on Monday opened a conference that it said would examine whether the Holocaust took place, claiming the meeting was an opportunity to discuss the World War II genocide in an atmosphere free of what it termed Western taboos.
The conference was initiated by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has described the Holocaust as a "myth" and called for Israel to be wiped off the map. Even before it opened, the gathering was condemned by Germany, the United States and Israel.
The organizers, the Foreign Ministry’s Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS), say the two-day conference has drawn 67 foreign researchers from 30 countries.
In his opening speech, the institute’s chief, Rasoul Mousavi, said the conference provided an opportunity to discuss "questions" about the Holocaust away from Western taboos and the restrictions imposed on scholars in Europe.
In Germany, Austria and France, it is illegal to deny the Holocaust.
"This conference seeks neither to deny nor prove the Holocaust," Mousavi said. "It is just to provide an appropriate scientific atmosphere for scholars to offer their opinions in freedom about a historical issue."
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki dismissed the foreign criticism as "predictable," telling conference delegates in a speech that there was "no logical reason for opposing this conference."
"The objective for organizing this conference is to create an atmosphere to raise various opinions about a historical issue. We are not seeking to deny or prove the Holocaust," Mottaki said.
"If the official version of the Holocaust is thrown into doubt, then the identity and nature of Israel will be thrown into doubt. And if, during this review, it is proved that the Holocaust was a historical reality, then what is the reason for the Muslim people of the region and the Palestinians having to pay the cost of the Nazis’ crimes?" Mottaki said.
In Israel, the official Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, issued a statement condemning the Tehran conference as an attempt to "paint (an) extremist agenda with a scholarly brush."
"The Iranian governments pseudo-academic conference, ’Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision,’ is an effort to mainstream Holocaust denial and must be unequivocally rejected," Yad Vashem said Monday.
The leading Israeli novelist and peace activist, Amos Oz, denounced the meeting.
"I think the conference in Iran is a sick joke, and I hope it will be received with revulsion and disgust everywhere in the world," Oz said.
Among the participants were the prominent French holocaust-denier, Robert Faurisson, and six members of the group Jews United Against Zionism, who were dressed in the traditional long black coats and black hats of orthodox Jews.
The Jews, two of whom said they were rabbis, came from the United States, Britain and Austria.
The conference was expected to receive a message from President Ahmadinejad, who has said that the killing of six million Jews by the Nazi German regime during World War II was a "myth" and "exaggerated."
The president has repeatedly questioned why the Holocaust has been used to justify the creation of Israel at the cost of Palestinian lands - a view popular among Iranian hard-liners.
Iran has spent months preparing for the conference, even publicizing it during the September visit to Tehran of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who contradicted his hosts by saying the Holocaust was a historical fact and that an exhibition of anti-Holocaust cartoons, then on display in the city, promoted hatred.
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