Iran, which disputes that Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis, is to hold a conference next month to allow historians to clarify "hidden angles" of the Holocaust, the foreign ministry has revealed. The December 11 and 12 international gathering aims to "create opportunities ... for a suitable scientific research so the hidden and unhidden angles of this most important political issue of the 20th century become more transparent," said a statement on the Iranian foreign ministry's website.
Iran's fiercely anti-Israeli regime is supportive of so-called Holocaust revisionists, who maintain that the systematic slaughter by the Nazis of mainland Europe's Jews and other groups during World War II was either invented or exaggerated.
The event is organized by the ministry's Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS) which has called on researchers and lecturers to take part in the conference. The gathering, titled "Study of Holocaust: A Global Perspective", has been scheduled to coincide with international Human Rights Day on December 10, it said. "This conference fully respects the Jewish religion and is away from politicization and propaganda," the statement said.
Topics include "anti-Semitism, Nazism and Zionism: collaboration or animosity; the concept of Holocaust and its roots; views of revisionists; denial or admittance of gas chambers," it added. "The laws against those who deny Holocaust and killing of the Palestinians," are also to be discussed.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has prompted international anger by dismissing the Holocaust as a "myth" used to justify the creation of Israel. In mid-August, Tehran staged an international contest of cartoons on the Holocaust, in response to the publication in Western papers last September of controversial caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed.