January 26, 2006	Thursday	Zilhaj 25, 1426

TEHRAN, Jan 25: Iran said on Wednesday it was willing to send a team of ‘independent investigators’ to visit former Nazi deaths camps across Europe — but not President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has described the Holocaust as a ‘myth’. “We welcome the proposal by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to visit the Holocaust sites,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was quoted as saying by the official news agency IRNA.

“We are ready to send teams of independent investigators to the places Mr Blair speaks of,” he said, but said these teams would comprise people ‘who are not sympathetic to those who committed the crimes and who are not sympathetic to the Zionist regime (Israel)’.

On Monday, Mr Blair lashed out at an Iranian foreign ministry plan to stage a conference questioning the Holocaust as ‘shocking, ridiculous, stupid’.

He also said Mr Ahmadinejad ‘should come and see the evidence of the Holocaust himself in the countries of Europe’.

But Mr Mottaki said he also ‘regretted the inappropriate language’ used by the British prime minister.

Mr Ahmadinejad, an ultra-conservative who came to power in a surprise victory last June, has provoked international condemnation with a number of anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish remarks.

They include labelling Israel a ‘tumour’ that should be ‘wiped off the map’ or moved as far away as Alaska and claiming the Holocaust was a Western invention.

On Tuesday, the Iranian foreign ministry defended its plan for a Holocaust conference.

“For half a century, the defenders of the Holocaust have used every tribune to defend their position, and now have to listen to others,” said the ministry’s spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi. —AFP