BERLIN, May 28: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said an “active worldwide network of Zionists” was trying to prevent his possible trip to Germany for the World Cup and expressed new doubts over whether the Holocaust happened.

In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine, Mr Ahmadinejad also said he doubted Germans were allowed to write the truth about the Holocaust and said if Nazi murder of European Jews really happened, Jews should be moved from Israel back to Europe.

“We say if the Holocaust happened, then the Europeans must accept the consequences and the price should not be paid by Palestine,” he said in a rare interview with Western media that was published on Sunday.

“If it did not happen, then the Jews must return to where they came from.

“I believe the German people are prisoners of the Holocaust. More than 60 million were killed in World War Two ... The question is: Why is it that only Jews are at the centre of attention?”

“How long is this going to go on?” he added. “How long will the German people be held hostage to the Zionists?...Why should you feel obligated to the Zionists? You’ve paid reparations for 60 years and will have to pay for another 100 years.”

Asked by Der Spiegel, in its cover story on Sunday entitled “The man the world is afraid of”, whether he stood by his earlier view the Holocaust was a myth, Mr Ahmadinejad said:

“I only accept something as the truth if I am truly convinced of it.

“In Europe there are two opinions on it. One group of researchers who are by and large politically motivated say the Holocaust happened. There is another group of researchers who have the opposite view and are by and large in prison for that.”

Mr Ahmadinejad said he was aware of the uproar that his anti-Israel remarks in the past had caused and added the fact he has been compared to Nazi ruler Adolf Hitler showed his ideas had touched a sensitive chord in Europe.

“The fact alone that my comments led to such hefty protests, even though I’m not a European, and the fact that I’ve been compared to certain persons in German history, indicates how explosive the atmosphere is for researchers in your country.”

On Iran’s dispute with the West over nuclear issue, Mr Ahmadinejad said European countries were making a mistake by siding with the United States in the dispute and will suffer because of it

He said Iran did not need nuclear weapons and criticised a propaganda machine directed at him from the West.

He said that it was unjust that Western nations that had nuclear weapons were trying to persuade Tehran to give up parts of its nuclear programme.

“These countries strayed from having nuclear power merely for peaceful purposes. They do not have the right to speak to us the way they do,” he said.

“We find this system of rules where a few countries can force their will upon the rest of the world discriminatory and unstable,” Mr Ahmadinejad said.—Reuters/AFP