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ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN - Tehran International Conference
"Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision 10-12 December 2006
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IPIS welcomed back if it recants
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IRAN SAYS PRESSURE FROM WESTERN GOVERNMENTS CAUSED
BOYCOTT OF HOLOCAUST CONFERENCE HOSTS
Sunday, December 17, 2006
FOXNEWS
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran on Sunday blamed pressure from Western governments and media for the decision by nearly 40 think-tanks to boycott the Iranian institute that hosted last week's Holocaust conference.
The head of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London,
Francois Heisbourg, said Saturday that the European and North American research
institutes had decided to suspend contact with the Institute for Political and
International Studies, a Tehran institute affiliated to the Iranian Foreign
Ministry.
Last week the IPIS convened a conference that questioned the existence of the
Holocaust, provoking an international outcry. The United States, European Union
and Israel denounced the conference, whose delegates included well-known
Holocaust deniers and David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
Heisbourg issued a statement saying that "through its complicity with the
deniers of the absolute evil that was the Holocaust, IPIS has now forfeited its
status as an acceptable partner."
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini cast doubt on the sincerity of
the Western institutes' move on Sunday, telling reporters: "Probably this was
decided under pressure from governments and Western media propaganda."
He said the IPIS was trying to convince the foreign think-tanks that the
Dec.11-12 conference had been a proper academic forum.
The conference was held at the instance of Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly said that Israel would be "wiped out" and the
Nazi genocide against European Jews was a "myth."
40 institutes boycott Iran think tank over Holocaust conference
Haaretz - By
The Associated Press, Sunday, December 17, 2006
PARIS - Nearly 40 European and North American research institutes will suspend
contacts with a leading Iranian think tank that helped organize last week's
conference in Tehran of Holocaust deniers, a Paris-based researcher said
Saturday.
The institutes, from Warsaw to Washington and beyond, have agreed to suspend
ongoing programs with the Iranian Institute for Political and International
Studies, or IPIS, according to a statement issued by Francois Heisbourg, who
organized the boycott.
They have also refused participation in IPIS meetings or invite IPIS staff to
their own forums and to decline travel to Iran sponsored by the Iranian
institute.
The December 11-12 conference in Tehran drew Holocaust deniers from around the
world to debate whether the World War II genocide of Jews took place. Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a keynote speaker, said that Israel will one day
be "wiped out" and "humanity will achieve freedom."
The conference drew denunciations from around the world.
Researchers, led by Heisbourg, decided to issue their own form of protest by
boycotting the Iranian institute that organized the conference.
"It's the equivalent for us of breaking off diplomatic relations between
embassies," Heisbourg said in a telephone interview.
Heisbourg, chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in
London and president of the Geneva Center for Security Policy, said the IPIS is
a touchstone in Iran for foreign researchers.
The statement describes the IPIS as a "mainstream Iranian interface" with
foreign think tanks.
"Through its complicity with the deniers of the absolute evil that was the
Holocaust, IPIS has now forfeited its status as an acceptable partner,"
according to the statement.
IPIS had the leading role in organizing the Tehran conference, calling for
papers, sending invitations, arranging logistics, Heisbourg said. "They convened
the meeting and ran the meeting," he said.
The decision to suspend contacts with the IPIS was a moral, not a political,
decision, Heisbourg said, "to make it very, very clear that every time a red
line is crossed there actually is a price to be paid. The price here is quite
real."
The decision to boycott IPIS will not be reconsidered without "an explicit
repudiation of Holocaust denial and a return to academic standards," the
statement said.
Dozens of European and American experts signed on to the statement, as well as
several in Canada and Australia.
Heisbourg said that among the signatories are John J. Hamre, head of the Center
for Strategic and International Studies in Washington; Volker Perthes, director
of Berlin's Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik; Tomas Ries, director of the
Swedish Institute for International Affairs; Ognyan Minchev, director of the
Institute for Regional and International Studies in Sofia, Bulgaria; Gordon
Smith of the Center for International Studies in Victoria, Canada; Eugeniusz
Smolnar, director for the Centre for International Relations in Warsaw, Poland;
Ross Babbage, director of Australia's Strategy International.
An array of French signers includes Thierry de Montbrial, director of the French
Institute of International Relations.
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Media spotlight on Iran's Holocaust talks |
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Reports and comment on the international conference on the Holocaust being held in Tehran feature across a wide spectrum of the Middle East media. In Iran itself, radio and TV bulletins have run lengthy reports mostly consisting of comments by foreign participants that people are not allowed to speak freely about the Holocaust in the West and that they fear prosecution when they return home. A German participant spoke in English to a reporter from the Iranian news channel IRINN: "This is Jewish power in Europe and especially in the United States. And everybody who says something else goes to prison, is punished, and is in prison. We are not allowed to say the truth. That's it." The conference also features as the lead story in some Iranian newspapers. The reformist daily Aftab has a front-page headline quoting the Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki as saying: "We neither confirm nor deny the Holocaust".
The daily Al-Vefagh which is published in Arabic prints a commentary on the conference by Musib Nu'aymi. An inset box in the same story says: "One of the speakers confirmed the Holocaust and said: This event did take place but the number of people killed is exaggerated." The conservative Jomhuri-ye Eslami has the front-page headline: "Myth of the Holocaust criticised at a conference of 150 of the world's researchers and historians". Iran Daily, the English-language daily published by the official news agency IRNA, runs the conference as its top story with a large photo and the headline: "Seeking Holocaust truth: Fact-finding committee planned". Other papers give the story less prominence, preferring to lead with reports on a university speech by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which was disrupted by some students. "Examination of the myth of the Holocaust at an international conference in Tehran" is the headline in the hard-line Kayhan daily; "Holocaust conference: Displaying the facts" is how the government-affiliated Iran paper sees it. The Javan newspaper, which is close to the Revolutionary Guards, has the story as its second lead on the front page: "Criticism of the Holocaust by experts from 30 countries". "Why is the denial of the Holocaust considered a punishable crime in some Western countries if these countries really defend freedom of expression?", he asks. "The aim of all this is just deception and obliteration of the facts." Israel Israeli radio broadcast a report on the conference in its morning bulletin at 0430gmt. It highlighted the case of an Israeli Arab who had apparently been refused permission to attend the gathering. The radio also reported that the Israeli parliament has contacted heads of other parliaments urging them to condemn any denial of the Holocaust. Alongside various reports, two Israeli papers devote commentaries to the issue. Noah Kliger, writing in the centrist Yediot Aharonot, is scathing in his judgement.
"All those lunatics, professional deniers of the Holocaust, who are veterans in infantile arguments that so contradict reality and all the facts, all of them rushed to Tehran to contribute their bit to this colossal scandal." An editorial in the English-language Jerusalem Post argues that the conference "illustrates the linkage between Holocaust denial and Israel denial". "The restoration of Jewish sovereignty over a small sliver of land was hardly at the expense of the Arabs, who came to enjoy many independent states of their own. The Iranian idea of justice is that the 22nd member of the Arab League, Palestine, be founded not alongside Israel but on our ashes." Arabic media - TV The Iran-backed, Arabic-language Al-Alam and the pan-Arab Al-Jazeera are the only TV channels observed to cover the conference on the day it opened in Tehran. The two channels, especially the latter, aired lengthy reports accompanied by video footage which included interviews with European participants. Al-Alam's presenter used terms such as the "holocaust theory" and "what is called the holocaust" in his report. The report also included a quote from a member of the Jews against Zionism group who attended the conference, expressing doubts about the truth behind the Holocaust. Al-Jazeera's coverage of the story included a screen caption with the words "what is known as the holocaust" in its description of the conference. The channel also aired an interview with its correspondent in Tehran who gave an account of what the conference was aiming to achieve. Arabic media - press The conference only features in the headlines of one of the London-based Arabic papers observed by BBC Monitoring. The independent, Arab nationalist Al-Quds Al-Arabi runs a report headlined "Holocaust conference begins in Iran amidst protest from West." The story does not feature on the comment pages. Elsewhere in the Middle East, only Egypt's pro-government Al-Akhbar devotes a commentary to the issue. Ibrahim Sa'dah writes that President Ahmadinejad expects the gathering to "conclude that the Holocaust is dubious on one hand and that the figure of six million Jews, who were allegedly killed in the Nazi detention camps, is very exaggerated". He continues that such concurrence with President Ahmadinejad's own opinions is vital, "otherwise his views will lose credibility in the eyes of Iranians". BBC Monitoring selects and translates news from radio, television, press, news agencies and the internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages. It is based in Caversham, UK, and has several bureaux abroad. |
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Why
is the denial of the Holocaust considered a punishable crime in some
Western countries if these countries really defend freedom of
expression? 
©-free 2006 Adelaide Institute