TEHRAN — 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; 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.
