German official: Prevent Holocaust deniers from attending Iranian conference.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
A senior German security official proposed Wednesday temporarily pulling the passports of neo-Nazis intending to participate in an Iranian conference on the Holocaust.
Guenther Beckstein, the interior minister of Bavaria, suggested that local authorities temporarily revoke the passports of right-wing extremists known to have expressed interest in participating in the conference in an effort to prevent them from traveling.
"It would massively damage Germany's image if German citizens (took part) in Iran to deny the Holocaust or the right of Israel to exist," said Beckstein, a member of the conservative Christian Social Union, sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union.
He called on the German government to take a stand on the issue, after the Iranian foreign ministry indicated some Germans had expressed interest in attending.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for the conference earlier this month, the latest step in his campaign against Israel. He has already called the Nazis' World War II slaughter of European Jews a "myth" and said the Jewish state should be wiped off the map or moved to Germany or the United States.