NEW YORK, Feb 22, 2001 (Reuters) - The World Jewish Congress called on Thursday for Lebanon to block what the group said was an anti-Semitic Holocaust meeting funded by Iran that will be held in Beirut next month.

Lord Greville Janner, the WJC vice president, wrote to Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson on Feb. 21, asking him to "use your good offices to call on the Lebanese government not to permit this polemic, anti-Semitic and hate-inspired conference to be held in their capital."

Elan Steinberg, the WJC executive director who gave Janner's letter to Reuters, said the Jewish advocacy group appealed to Persson because his country currently holds the European Union's rotating presidency.

He said Stockholm also hosted a conference last year on Holocaust education called "Combating Intolerance" that was attended by 40 nations.

Marc Weber, director of the Newport Beach, California-based Institute for Historical Review, said his group was helping the Swiss organization Verité et Justice put on the conference, which is called "Revisionism and Zionism."

"People in Lebanon should have the same right to attend and host a conference, the same as other people have in the United States," Weber said.

According to Weber, the Verité et Justice director Jurgen Graf was sentenced by a Swiss court in July 1998 for what Weber called "Holocaust denial." Graf now lives in Tehran as the guest of scholars, according to Weber.

He said said he did not know whether Iran was paying for the Beirut conference.

Weber said his group did not deny the Holocaust occurred, but he said it published many works that were skeptical of what he called "the hype, hyperbole, misreporting and distortion" about the Holocaust.

JTA | News at a Glance | March 02, 2001 11:55:16 AM ET

Switzerland has issued an international warrant for a well-known Holocaust denier whose organization is helping coordinate a Beirut conference on Holocaust denial, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Jurgen Graf's Verite et Justice is involved in an April conference of the Institute for Historical Review.

Simon Wiesenthal Center | Los Angeles

March 1, 2001

SWC URGES LEBANESE PRIME MINISTER TO STOP HOLOCAUST DENIERS' CONFERENCE IN BEIRUT

THE Simon Wiesenthal Center has urged Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri to ban an upcoming Holocaust denial conference in Beirut sponsored by the Institute for Historical Review (IHR).

In a February 28, 2001 letter to the Prime Minister, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center noted that the IHR was, "founded and funded by Willis Carto, America's most notorious racist over the past four decades. He has associated himself and supported vicious anti-black and antisemitic causes."

The conference was being organized by a Switzerland-based group Verité et Justice and its director Jürgen Graf who fled Switzerland in 1998 to escape a 15-month sentence for Holocaust Denial. Recently, the government of Switzerland issued an international arrest warrant against Graf, who resides in Tehran. In urging the intervention of Lebanese authorities, the Wiesenthal Center letter said, in part,

"there is a wide range of viewpoints as to how peace can be reached in your region, but certainly the introduction and acceptance of Holocaust denial into the mainstream of Lebanon and the Arab world is not one of them. It will only poison hearts and minds of the uninformed and further fan the flames of hate and mistrust in the region."

In addition to Lebanese and Swiss authorities, the Wiesenthal Center has also contacted U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and leaders in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives over the matter.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is a leading international Jewish human rights organization that has NGO status at the United Nations. For more information, contact the Wiesenthal Center's Public Relations department, 310-553-9036.

News from the IHR

Zionist Groups Denounce Beirut Meeting

INTEREST MOUNTS FOR 'REVISIONISM AND ZIONISM' ONFERENCE

PREPARATIONS are continuing according to plan for the landmark international conference on "Revisionism and Zionism" in Beirut, Lebanon, March 31-April 3, 2001. The event's importance is reflected in the eager inquiries from journalists in several countries, in the steady stream of guest registrations, and in the anxious denunciations recently issued by leading Jewish-Zionist groups.

The Anti-Defamation League, one of the world's most powerful Zionist organizations, issued a special news release, February 11, bitterly complaining about the Beirut conference. It specifically denounced the Institute for Historical Review, which is helping to organize the event. Apart from numerous errors of fact, blatant bias, and childish accusations of the allegedly evil motives of the "deniers," nearly all the factual information in the ADL release is simply taken from the IHR web site. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, another ardent apologist for Israel, the next day issued its own strident condemnation of the Beirut conference. It similarly took a swipe at the "so-called Institute for Historical Review."

Prominent revisionist scholars, researchers and activists from a range of countries are scheduled to address the Beirut conference, which will both reflect and further strengthen the growing cooperation between independent scholars in Europe, the United States and Middle East countries. Conference addresses will be given in Arabic, French and English.

The four-day event is being organized by the Swiss revisionist organization Verité et Justice, in cooperation with the IHR. Verité et Justice director Jürgen Graf, who was sentenced by a Swiss court in July 1998 to 15 months imprisonment for "Holocaust denial" has fled his homeland to live in political exile rather than serve the politically-motivated sentence. The 49-year-old educator is currently in Tehran as a guest of Iranian scholars.

Guests are welcome to attend the Beirut conference, but they must cover their own travel and hotel expenses. There is no registration or attendance fee. United States citizens traveling to Lebanon require a valid US passport and a visa issued by the Lebanese embassy or a Lebanese consulate.

Further details about the Beirut conference are posted on the "Beirut 2001" section of the IHR web site: http://ihr.org

-- Mark Weber: [email protected]