Tehran calls for review of Holocaust evidence
TEHRAN -- Iran announced plans yesterday for a conference to examine evidence for the Holocaust, a new step in hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's campaign against Israel -- one that could deepen Tehran's international isolation.
Ahmadinejad already has called the Nazis' World War II slaughter of European Jews a ''myth" and has said the Jewish state should be wiped off the map or moved to Germany or the United States.
Those remarks prompted a global outpouring of condemnation, and it wasn't clear who would be willing to attend an Iranian-sponsored Holocaust conference.
Last month, however, the leader of Egypt's main Islamic opposition group joined Ahmadinejad in characterizing the Holocaust as a myth and lambasted Western governments for criticizing those who dispute the Jewish genocide happened.
''Western democracies have slammed all those who don't see eye to eye with the Zionists regarding the myth of the Holocaust," Muslim Brotherhood chief Mohammed Mahdi Akef wrote on the group's website.
Last week, Tehran had further raised international concern about its nuclear program by resuming activities at its uranium enrichment facility.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN organization that monitors nuclear proliferation, said Iran was resuming small-scale nuclear enrichment, a process that can produce fuel for atomic bombs.
That, in turn, prompted Washington and its allies to renew their push to take Iran before the UN Security Council for the possible sanctions.
The United States, its European allies, and Japan say Tehran is trying to build a nuclear weapon. Iran denies the accusation and says its nuclear program is only for electricity generation.
In calling for penalties against Iran, Republican Senator Trent Lott cited Tehran's plans for the Holocaust conference.
''At the minimum, we should go to the UN Security Council, and we should impose economic sanctions unless there is some dramatic change in the Iranian position," he said on CNN's ''Late Edition."
Representative Tom Lantos, Democrat of California, a Holocaust survivor, has said it is his understanding that Iran was considering a conference that would call into question evidence that the Nazis conducted a mass killings of European Jews during World War II.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi did not disclose where or when the Holocaust conference would be held, and he would not say who would attend or what had prompted Tehran to sponsor it.
Ahmadinejad, who took office in August, caused an international outcry in October by calling Israel a ''disgraceful blot" that should be ''wiped off the map."
