- TEHRAN (AFP) - An Iranian
government-sponsored body set up to probe the veracity of the Holocaust
has challenged Europe to hand over documents about the mass slaughter
of Jews in World War II.
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- Mohammad Ali Ramin, the head of the "World Holocaust
Foundation" created after Iran's controversial Holocaust conference
last year, said Austria, Germany and Poland in particular should supply
documents.
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- "They should hand over the proof for the dossier
on the organized massacre of Jews in Europe during World War II to the
independent international fact-finding committee affiliated to this foundation,"
the IRNA state news agency quoted him as saying Tuesday.
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- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered the creation of
the foundation after inviting a number of controversial revisionist Holocaust
researchers to a conference in Tehran in December that caused an international
outcry.
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- Ahmadinejad has repeatedly questioned the scale of the
Holocaust, described the mass killing of six million Jews in World War
II as a "myth" and also called for Israel to be "wiped
from the map".
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- The foreign researchers invited to the conference --
some of whom have criminal records at home -- gave papers claiming the
Holocaust never happened on the scale assumed by the vast majority of
historians.
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- Mainstream historians specialising in the Third Reich
counter there is ample documentary proof that around six million Jews
were killed by the Nazis in World War II although some estimates put the
figure slightly higher or lower.
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- The UN General Assembly last month unanimously approved
a US- proposed resolution condemning denial of the Holocaust, in a move
diplomats said was directly aimed at Iran's stance.
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- Meanwhile, leading reformist daily Etemad Melli published
an editorial by an academic condemning the conference, the latest voice
to be raised at home against the gathering.
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- "The Tehran Holocaust conference gave foreign media
the chance to attack the Islamic republic, and several countries and also
international figures like (former and present UN Secretary Generals)
Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon reacted," said Mohammad Taghi Karoubi.
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- The conference caused Iran "international isolation
over an issue that has nothing to do with our national interests and does
nothing to help the oppressed Palestinian people," he added.
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