TEHRAN, Dec. 5 — Iran will hold a two-day conference on the Holocaust next week in which more than 60 scholars from some 30 countries will participate, the Foreign Ministry said today.
The seminar is in response to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s comments last year, when he said the scale of the genocide of the Jews had been exaggerated, the deputy foreign minister, Manouchehr Mohammadi, told a news conference today. Mr. Ahmadinejad first stirred outrage in the West in December last year, when he called the Holocaust a myth. He has repeatedly said that the Holocaust has been used as a tool of propaganda, and banned scholars here from research on the subject. The president also sent a 3,000-word letter to Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel outlining his arguments.
Mr. Mohammadi said next week’s conference will “provide the opportunity for scholars from both sides to give their papers in freedom and without pre-conceived ideas.” He refused to give the names of the 67 international scholars he said were attending the seminar, out of concern that their countries would prohibit them from coming.
He said the conference does not mean that Iran “denies the crimes of Hitler.”
“Since we are not accused and responsible for the Holocaust, we are an impartial judge,” Mr. Mohammadi said.
The conference, sponsored by the Foreign Ministry’s Institute for Political and International Studies (known as IPIS), will be held on Dec. 11 and 12.
On its Web site, the institute said that the purpose of conference — held on the International Human Rights Day — is to explore the Holocaust while respecting Judaism and avoiding propaganda. Participants were invited to submit their papers on a range of nearly 30 related subjects. Among these are the nature of anti-Semitism, Jews in Iran and Islam, Zionism, gas chambers (if they could be proven or denied) and on freedom of speech and how the law treats those who deny the Holocaust.
Mr. Mohammadi today brushed off any idea that the seminar could advocate anti-Semitism and declared anti-Semitism to be a Western phenomenon. The proof for that, he said, was Iran’s community of 25,000 Jews.
Today’s announcement came as foreign ministers of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council — Britain, France, China, Russia and the United States — plus Germany, met in France to discuss possible sanctions against Iran over its refusal to halt its sensitive nuclear activities.
Iran refused to suspend its uranium enrichment program by Aug. 31, as requested by the United Nations. The United States has accused Iran of trying to convert its nuclear energy activities into a secret weapons program.
Iran says its program is peaceful and wants to produce nuclear fuel for medical and other industrial purposes. Speaking in the northern city of Sari today, Mr. Ahmadinejad warned Western nations that Iran would change its policies toward them if they impose punitive measure on Iran.
“I am telling you in plain language,” the ISNA news agency quoted the president as saying, “If you try in your propaganda, and at international organizations, to take steps against the right of the Iranian people, our people will consider it an act of hostility.” “And if you insist on pursuing this path, Iran will reconsider its policies and plans,” he added.
