Wiesenthal Centre to Swiss President: "Deny or Withdraw Your Offer to Iran
to Host Geneva Conference on 'Selective Perceptions of the Holocaust'" 

Today's edition of the Zurich-based daily WELTWOCHE reports on a meeting in
Berne on 21 December 2006, at which the then Foreign Minister of
Switzerland, Micheline Calmy-Rey, met with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister
Saeed Jalili.

The Weltwoche claimed to possess a confidential document detailing a
proposal of Calmy-Rey to Iran, that Switzerland organize an international
conference in Geneva, on "Selective Perceptions of the Holocaust". This
meeting reportedly took place around the same time as Tehran was holding
its Holocaust Denial conference.

In a letter to now President Calmy-Rey, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's
Director for International Relations, Dr Shimon Samuels, noted that "the
coordinator of that conference - Iranian Foreign Minister Mottaki -
admitted last week, at the World Economic Forum in Jordan, that he
acknowledged the reality of the Holocaust but that he had aimed to
politically embarrass the West to serve his objectives in the Middle East."

Samuels continued, "Madam President, if you, indeed, made this conference
proposal, Switzerland has in one move compromised its status of neutrality.
You have, thereby, served the Iranian political agenda, encouraging the
most extreme rejectionists of any hope of Middle East peace, and offered a
platform for every neo-Nazi and antisemitic Holocaust denier."

The Centre urged the President "to publicly deny or withdraw this
outrageous proposal, and to apologize for its offence to all survivors of
the Holocaust and the memory of its victims."

For further information, please contact Shimon Samuels at +33.609.77.01.58