by Frances Harrison , for BBC News
December 5, 2006


Iran's foreign ministry will host an international conference in Tehran next week that will ask if the Holocaust in World War II actually happened. An official said 67 foreign scholars from 30 countries would be attending, but refused to say who they were.

In February, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad caused controversy by saying the Holocaust was a myth.
The remark was condemned by Jews around the world. Six million Jews were killed by the German Nazis during the war.

A spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, Manouchehr Mohammadi, said the two-day conference would begin on 11 December. Mr Mohammadi refused to identify the scholars who would attend because, he said, some of them had had their passports taken away by foreign governments to prevent them attending. He said the idea of a Holocaust conference had first been proposed by President Ahmadinejad, and the first question to be posed was - did the Holocaust actually happen or not?

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