TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran, whose president has denied the Holocaust, said Sunday it would hold a conference to examine the scientific evidence concerning Nazi Germany's extermination of 6 million Jews.

Hard-line Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has recently provoked global condemnation for saying the Holocaust is a "myth" and calling for Israel to be wiped from the face of the earth.

Iran further alarmed Western countries last week by restarting its research at a nuclear facility after a two-year freeze.

"It is a strange world. It is possible to discuss everything except the Holocaust," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters.

"The Foreign Ministry plans to hold a conference on the scientific aspect of the issue to discuss and review its repercussions."

Asefi did not say where or when the conference would be held or who would attend.

Earlier this month, the Association of Muslim Journalists, a hard-line group, proposed holding a similar conference.

But Asefi said he was not aware of the association's wishes. He said the conference he announced was planned and supported by the ministry.

On Saturday, Ahmadinejad urged the West to be open-minded enough to allow a free international debate on the real aspects of the Holocaust.

Rep. Tom Lantos, a California Democrat, has said he understood Iran was considering a conference to call into question the evidence that the Nazis conducted a mass murder of European Jews during World War II.

"It is a strange world. It is possible to discuss everything except the Holocaust," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters.

Regardless, its a very strange subject for an Iranian conference in my opinion.

its the outright denial that people are arrested for.

...its a very strange subject for an Iranian conference...

Why is it any stranger than the monopoly on the subject enjoyed by American Jews and Western pro-capitalist/anti-socialist media?

Iran can probably look at the subject more objectively than the US, Israel, or virtually any Western country with links to the two.

I suggest you go live in Iran for a bit. You won't be spitting that garbage out of your mouth then.

Imagine if Iran did prove the holocaust is a lie, that would be the ultimate proof that even Hitler wasn't as bad as the communists

And you think that there is nothing wrong with that?

Why is it any stranger than the monopoly on the subject enjoyed by American Jews and Western pro-capitalist/anti-socialist media?

Iran can probably look at the subject more objectively than the US, Israel, or virtually any Western country with links to the two.

What makes you think that the West is incapable of discussing it in a balanced manner?

What makes you think that the West is incapable of discussing it in a balanced manner?

1 Denmark 0,50
- Finland 0,50
- Iceland 0,50
- Ireland 0,50
- Netherlands 0,50
- Norway 0,50
- Slovakia 0,50
- Switzerland 0,50
9 New Zealand 0,67
10 Latvia 1,00
11 Estonia 2,00
- Germany 2,00
- Sweden 2,00
- Trinidad and Tobago 2,00
15 Slovenia 2,25
16 Lithuania 3,00
17 Austria 3,25
18 Canada 3,33
19 Czech Republic 3,50
- France 3,50
21 Bosnia and Herzegovina 3,67
22 Belgium 4,00
- United States of America (American territory) 4,00

Reporters Without Borders compiled the index by asking its partner organisations (14 freedom of expression organisations in five continents), its 130 correspondents around the world, as well as journalists, researchers, jurists and human rights activists, to answer 52 questions to indicate the state of press freedom in 167 countries (others were not included for lack of information).

That link doesn't work

Use Internet Explorer.

There are laws against certain opinions on the holocaust