HOLOCAUST CONFERENCE seeks to reveal the facts: official

TEHRAN -- Tehran is planning to hold an international conference on the holocaust from December 10 to 11.

Thinkers from 30 countries will participate in the conference.

The Deputy Foreign Minister for Educational and Research affairs Dr. Manuchehr Mohammadi said on Tuesday that Iran has invited some 67 researchers from 30 countries including Germany, France, Britain, Sweden, India, Japan, the United States of America, Belgium, Austria, Kenya, Tajikistan, Hungary, Canada and some Jews.

The Foreign Ministry Office for Political and International Studies will host the conference.

He said that both those who believe the West’s standard history of the holocaust and holocaust skeptics will be participating in the conference.

The conference entitled “The Holocaust, Global Outlook” is being held to find out whether the holocaust really happened, Mohammadi told local and foreign journalists.

“If the conference concludes that the holocaust happened, Iran will accept it,” he added. However, the Foreign Ministry official said if the holocaust really happened, “why should the Palestinian nation and other Middle Easterners have to pay the price?”

Mohammadi lamented the commotion which followed a statement on the holocaust last year by President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.

“If some six million Jews were really killed in the holocaust, why should the researchers be forbidden from investigating the case and why should those who doubt it be imprisoned,” the official commented.

Mohammadi said that the conference is to discuss all issues related to holocaust with regard to historical and physical aspects of the issue.

He underlined that Iran is not an anti-Jewish country and believes that all the people on the earth are created by the Almighty God and therefore their beliefs should be respected.

As for the fact that a similar conference named “The opponents and deniers of the holocaust” is being held simultaneously in Germany, Mohammadi said that the Tehran conference is merely aimed at studying the issue in a logical and scientific manner and is quite independent from the German conference.