TEHRAN, Dec 12: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted on Tuesday Israel would suffer the same fate as the USSR, as Iran faced a barrage of condemnation for hosting a conference casting doubt on the Holocaust.

A host of “revisionist” historians, including a former Ku Klux Klan leader, attended the conference that wrapped up on Tuesday, giving papers claiming to show that mass slaughter of six million Jews in World War II did not happen.

“When I said what was in the mind of the nation, that this regime (Israel) would disappear, the Zionist network attacked me a lot,” the president told the participants after welcoming them for a private meeting after the conference.

“But just as the USSR disappeared, soon the Zionist regime will disappear,” he said.

CONFERENCE SLAMMED: British Prime Minister Tony Blair slammed the conference as “shocking beyond belief”, while the United States described the meeting as “an affront to the entire civilized world.” Mr Ahmadinejad, who has described Holocaust as a “myth” and cast doubt on the scale of the slaughter, did not repeat his previous comments but complained that the Holocaust was being used as a pretext by Israel.

Papers delivered on the last day of the conference included “A Challenge to the Official Holocaust Story”, and “Holocaust, the Achilles Heel of a Primordial Jewish Trojan”.

“I think it is such a symbol of sectarianism and hatred towards people of another religion, I find it just unbelievable,” said Mr Blair. “I found that this conference that they had questioning the Holocaust is shocking beyond belief.” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters: “The gathering of Holocaust deniers in Tehran is an affront to the entire civilised world, as well as to the traditional Iranian values of tolerance and mutual respect.” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert led a chorus of angry condemnation from the Jewish state, saying the statements fromm Iranian officials “underline the danger to western civilisation as a whole from such a state”.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, after meeting Olmert in Berlin, condemned “in the strongest terms” dismissals of the Holocaust by the “revisionist” historians.—AFP