TEHRAN,
Iran (CNN) -- Iran, whose president has labeled the attempt by Nazi Germany
to exterminate Jews during World War II a "myth" and called for the
destruction of Israel, announced Sunday it will hold a conference on the
Holocaust.
"There
will be a conference that will research the topic of the Holocaust and all
its dimensions in the future," according to a statement on the state-run
Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).
The statement
did not say when the meeting would take place or who would be involved but
said it would be sponsored by Iran's Foreign Ministry and
the Organization of the Islamic Conference "and in consultation with
other countries to pursue this issue."
Last month,
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
said in a speech, "They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred,
and place this above God, religions and the prophets."
He added,
"The West has given more significance to the myth of the genocide of the
Jews."
He argued that
the "myth" of the Holocaust served as Europe's pretext for the
existence of Israel.
U.N.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan,
President Bush, and many European officials condemned the remarks. Israeli
officials also said Iran was ignoring the
biblical Jewish homeland and thousands of years of Jewish history.
Ahmadinejad's remarks about the Holocaust and calls for the
destruction of Israel play out in the
showdown over his nation's nuclear intentions.
U.S. and European officials
have expressed concern that Iran is trying to build a
nuclear weapon under the guise of restarting its nuclear reactors for
peaceful energy purposes. Tehran insists it has the
right to build nuclear fuel.
Britain, France and Germany -- the so-called EU-3,
which conducted failed negotiations with Iran -- along with the United States want the International
Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, to turn the issue
over to the U.N. Security Council.
"The
current president of Iran has announced that the
destruction of Israel is an important part
of their agenda, and that's unacceptable," President Bush said Friday at
the White House, at an appearance with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
"And the
development of a nuclear weapon, it seems like to me, would make him a step
closer to achieving that objective."
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