IRAN - Dec 12 - More Angry Words At Iran's Holocaust Conference.

Pres Mahmoud Ahmadi-nejad tells delegates at an international conference questioning the Holocaust that Israel's days are numbered. Ahmadi-nejad, who has set off an international outcry by referring to the killing of six million Jews in World War II as a "myth" and calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map", opened another verbal attack on the Jewish state. "Thanks to people's wishes and God's will, the trend for the existence of the Zionist regime is downwards and this is what God has promised and what all nations want", he said. "Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out", he added. His words received warm applause from conference delegates, who included ultra-Orthodox anti-Israel Jews and European and American writers who argue that the Holocaust was either fabricated or exaggerated. The conference has set off a storm of indignation across Europe, where many countries have made it a crime to publicly disavow the Holocaust. The EU's top justice official condemned the conference, as did the Vatican and Germany, adding their voices to those of Israel and the US, which issued condemnations, when the conference opened. PM Tony Blair of Britain denounced it as "shocking beyond belief" and proof of Ahmadi-nejad's extremism. Iran says it organised the conference to shed light on the reasons behind the formation of the state of Israel after World War II and to allow researchers from countries where it is a crime to question the Holocaust to speak freely. "Iran is your home and is the home of all freedom seekers of the world", Ahmadi-nejad said. "Here you can express your views and exchange opinions in a friendly, brotherly and free atmosphere". He urged countries where Holocaust denial is a crime to respect freedom of speech and not to take action against any of the conference participants on their return. Human rights groups frequently number Iran as one of the world's worst violators of free speech, where scores of newspapers have been closed, journalists have been jailed, access to Web sites have been blocked and government critics have been driven from the country. Delegates at the meeting earlier agreed to form a "fact-finding" committee to study the Holocaust. The head of the committee, identified as Muhammad Ali Ramin, an Iranian academic, said its members were "not racist or opposed to any particular group". "Rather they are just seeking the truth to set humanity truly free", the ISNA students news agency quoted him as saying. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said the conference "shows the danger of the situation Israel is in and in particular the threat that Israel lives under". She was speaking after meeting Ehud Olmert, who was on his first visit to Germany as Israel's PM. Deborah Lipstadt, a professor of Holocaust studies at Emory University in Atlanta, drew a sharp distinction between the conference and the publication this year of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, which triggered protests across the Islamic world. "It's one thing to poke fun at a faith - even Judaism. It's a different thing to lie about history", she said in a telephone interview. "The question is: When does hate speech become incitement? These people are haters - and haters can cause great damage". But Soeren Espersen of the Danish People's Party, which staunchly defended the Muhammad cartoons, said people should have the right to speak their minds - even at a "hideous" conference like the one in Tehran. "We believe in freedom of speech also for nut cases", he said.