TEHRAN, Iran (AP) --
Iran's hard-line president said Tuesday that Israel will one day be ''wiped
out'' as the Soviet Union was, drawing applause from participants in a
conference casting doubt on the Holocaust.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's
comments were likely to further fuel the outcry prompted by the two-day
gathering, which has gathered some of Europe's and the United States'
best-known Holocaust deniers.
Anger over the
conference could further isolate Iran as the West considers sanctions in the
standoff over Tehran's nuclear program.
But Ahmadinejad
appeared to revel in his meeting Tuesday with conference delegates, shaking
hands with American participants and sitting near six anti-Israel Jewish
participants, dressed in black ultra-Orthodox coats and hats.
''The Zionist regime
will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will
achieve freedom,'' Ahmadinejad said during Tuesday's meeting in his offices,
according to the official IRNA news agency.
He called for elections
among ''Jews, Christians and Muslims so the population of Palestine can select
their government and destiny for themselves in a democratic manner.''
Ahmadinejad has used
anti-Israeli rhetoric and cast doubt on the Holocaust to rally anti-Western
supporters at home and abroad, particularly in Asia and the Middle East.
Several times he has referred to the Holocaust as a ''myth'' used to impose the
state of Israel on the Arab world.
''The Holocaust is the
device used as the pillar of Zionist imperialism,
Zionist aggression, Zionist terror and Zionist murder,'' David Duke, a
former Ku Klux Klan leader and former
state representative in Louisiana, told The Associated Press.
Ahmadinejad announced
the conference would set up a ''fact-finding commission'' to determine whether
the Holocaust happened or not. The commission will ''help end a 60-year-old
dispute,'' he said.
The Tehran conference
was touted by participants and organizers as an exercise in academic freedom
and a chance to openly consider whether 6 million Jews really died in the
Holocaust, away from Western taboos and the restrictions imposed on scholars in
Europe, where some countries have made it a crime to deny the Nazi genocide
during World War II.
It gathered 67 writers
and researchers from 30 countries, most of whom argue that either the
Holocaust did not happen or that it was vastly exaggerated. Many have
been jailed or fined in France, Germany or Austria, where it is illegal to deny
the Holocaust.
Participants milled
around a model of the Auschwitz concentration camp brought by one speaker,
Australian Frederick Toben, who uses the mock-up in lectures contending that
the camp was too small to kill mass numbers of Jews. More than 1 million people
are estimated to have been killed there.
反シオニズム、反イスラエルのユダヤ人のラビの発言
Rabbi Moshe
David Weiss, one of six members attending from the group Jews United Against
Zionism, told delegates, ''We don't want to deny the killing of Jews in World
War II, but Zionists have given much higher figures for how many people were
killed.''
''They have used the
Holocaust as a device to justify their oppression,'' he said. His group rejects
the creation of Israel on the grounds that it violates Jewish religious law.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Tuesday that the
conference was ''shocking beyond belief'' and ''a symbol of sectarianism and
hatred.''
In Washington, the
White House condemned Iran for convening a conference it called ''an affront to
the entire civilized world.''