Iran to hold Holocaust conference despite furor

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said on Sunday it would hold a conference in a few months time to examine the scale of the Holocaust, which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has described as a myth.

The Iranian head of state has caused international outrage by publicly doubting the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis, and calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map".

"The conference to discuss the Holocaust will be held in Tehran this spring," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told a weekly news conference, without giving a precise date.

"There are some unanswered questions about the scale of the Holocaust which should be discussed," he said.

Asefi did not say who would attend but invited British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who this week described the idea of the conference as "shocking, ridiculous, stupid".

Blair has said Ahmadinejad, a former Revolutionary Guardsman elected president by a landslide in June, should visit Europe and "see the evidence of the Holocaust himself".

Asefi accused the West of making an unnecessary fuss about the proposed Foreign Ministry-sponsored conference.

"Why are some Western countries so worried about it? Such remarks are against freedom of thought," he said. "I suggest Blair make a presentation at this conference in Tehran.

"We will give him the time to express his views ... he can defend the Holocaust if he wants to do so."

Regarding Blair's suggestion that Ahmadinejad visit Europe to see evidence of the Holocaust, Asefi said: "We have to see when the president Ahmadinejad has time for it."