Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has dismissed the Holocaust as a myth.

And last January, the Iranian government announced it would hold a conference on the Holocaust. It said it intended to invite academics such as German neo-Nazi Horst Mahler and the Israeli journalist and Christian convert Israel Shamir, both of whom are Holocaust deniers.

Back in January, Western politicians, especially in Germany, were up in arms at the plan -- although it was debated at the time whether the conference would actually take place, and what it was intended to provoke. Now, however, it seems clear that it will take place after all.

Questioning the gas chambers

Iran's foreign ministry has invited scholars from 30 countries to discuss questions such as the scale of the Holocaust, and whether or not the Nazis really used gas chambers to kill Jews.

Deputy Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mohammadi said 67 researchers from countries including Britain, Germany and France would take part in the two-day meeting starting on Monday, according to Wednesday's Jomhuri-ye Eslami newspaper.

Not in attendance will be British historian David Irving. He was on the original invitation list, but is currently serving a three-year jail term in Austria for Holocaust denial.

Ahmadinejad: Holocaust open to question

Ahmadinejad caused international outrage last year when he said the Holocaust -- in which six million Jews were killed by the Nazis -- was a myth. He has not repeated that remark but has said the Holocaust is open to question.

Foreign Minister Mohammadi said the aim of the conference, dubbed "Holocaust, World Prospect," was to give scholars a chance to discuss the issue freely.

Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany and Austria

When the conference plans were firsted announced in January, German Green party chief Reinhard Bütikofer called it further evidence that Ahmadinejad was pursuing an "unrestrained policy of anti-Semitic indoctrination" in Iran.

Bütikofer said Ahmadinejad had used public statements questioning the legitimacy of the Holocaust to mobilize Iranian fundamentalists. This will lead, he said, to "the international isolation of the Iranian regime."

Legal consequences?

But speaking in an interview with German magazine Der Spiegel earlier this year, Gert Weisskirchen, the foreign affairs spokesman for the Social Democratic Party, warned western leaders not to be sucked into a further row with Iran as the so-called "Holocaust experts" could not be taken seriously.

As well as condemning the conference, German politicians were quick to point out that any Germans who spoke at the conference would have to accept the legal consequences. Holocaust denial is a criminal offence in Germany.

But according to Gerry Gable, the former editor of anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, "Iran obviously has no law against Holocaust denial and therefore if (anyone) speaks there they will not be punished."

TEHRAN, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- The controversial and highly sensitive Iranian nuclear issue, coming in the spotlight for more than three years, was stuck at a standstill by the end of 2006 due to the hardline stance pursued by both Tehran and the Western countries.

The sticking point between the two sides was uranium enrichment activities, which Iran claimed for generating electricity while the West feared might be used to make nuclear weapons. Despite great efforts that the international community had paid to defusethe crisis, the whole situation was still inevitably fell into a deadlock.

IRAN'S URANIUM ENRICHMENT AND ITS NUCLEAR STANCE

Shortly after Tehran decided to resume uranium enrichment work, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared on April 11 that the country had successfully produced 3.5 percent enriched uranium with its first group of 164 centrifuges.

Western countries, especially the U.S. feared that Iran's nuclear program was aimed at making nuclear weapons, but according to many experts, including the International Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA), uranium with 3.5 percent purity was at a pretty low level and was actually not enough to make a bomb.

However, Iran's top officials have made a lot of flinty comments on Western demand to freeze uranium enrichment, saying Iran was already a nuclear country and it was deserved to be respected as a powerful country by the international community.

Accompanying these remarks, an Iranian heavy water plant dived into circulation on Aug. 26, which was used to feed a neighboring nuclear research reactor under construction. The research reactoris going to be completed in 2009 despite IAEA's opposing attitude,and could produce plutonium for what Iran said of medical use at the appointed time.

What is more, Tehran confirmed the country's experts had installed the second group of another 164 centrifuges on Oct. 25 and said Iran had gained the product (uranium) several days later.

More over, President Ahmadinejad also disclosed Iran would install 3,000 centrifuges by the end of this year, and would finally have 60,000 for the whole program.

INTERNATIONAL EFFORTS, PRESSURE TO DEFUSE CRISIS AND IRAN'S RESISTANCE

In the face of Iran's uncompromising position, the international community outspread both persuasion and squeeze play, beginning a persistent effort to seek diplomatic solution to the nuclear issue.

Due to Iran's insistence to enrichment activities, the IAEA board of governors on Feb. 4 adopted a resolution at an emergency meeting to report Iran's nuclear issue to the UN Security Council.Iran immediately slashed at that decision and vowed it would not bend to such a "pressure".

In order to ease the tension between Iran and the international community, chief of UN nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei paid avisit to Tehran in April, he urged on Iran to abide by UN requestand to suspend its nuclear activities for a specific period of time, but Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani told him the UN Security Council statement on March 29 demanding Iran to freeze the enrichment-related activities was "not so important".

In June, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council(Britain, China, France, Russia, and the U.S.) plus Germany agreed a new package over Iran's disputed nuclear issues. The proposal included both incentives aimed at persuading Iran to suspend uranium enrichment and possible sanctions if Iran chooses not to comply.

Later, European Union (EU) foreign policy chief Javier Solana visited Tehran to present Iran the new six-nation proposal, and Iranian President Ahmadinejad promised to give a formal response on Aug. 22.

However, the international community seemed to have no patience to wait for Iran's answer for two months. The UN Security Councilon July 31 adopted a resolution by a vote of 14 to 1, urging Tehran to "suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development" by Aug. 31 or face the prospect of sanctions.

As a response, Iran's top leaders, especially Ahmadinejad have repeatedly said the country would not accept it and "the Iranian people do not give in to language of force".

On Aug. 22, in its formal response to the package, Iran didn't mention anything about "suspension", a huge slash to the world powers' effort. Soon, the UN deadline of Aug. 31 also passed, the UN Security Council received nothing from the Iranian government but Ahmadinejad's pledge "not to back down an inch from its legal rights in the face of intimidation".

In order to prevent the situation at that time from moving into further crisis, EU's Solana met with Larijani several times in September to discuss Iran's possibility to halt enrichment.

But after the month-long contact, the EU was disappointed with Tehran's uncompromising stance. On Oct. 17, the EU foreign ministers issued a statement which virtually admitted the failure of negotiations, saying that if Iran does not comply with UN Security Council's requirements, the EU would "work for the adoption of measures under Article 41 of the UN Charter," which stipulates economic and diplomatic sanctions.

Iran's top officials subsequently criticized EU's statement,saying it would destroy the opportunity to resolve Iran's nuclear issue peacefully and worsen the crisis in Mideast.

"These means will allow us to extend the observation capabilities of UNIFIL (the UN Interim Force in Lebanon) in the area," he said.

France currently leads the UNIFIL deployment, to which it has contributed 1,650 soldiers and 13 modern Leclerc tanks. Other European countries, notably Italy, are also participating.

The beefed-up force was sent to southern Lebanon following the July-August war between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah militia to keep the two sides apart and prevent further hostilities.

Israel has been sending warplanes over Lebanon, ostensibly to monitor arms-smuggling routes along the Syrian border, but both Paris and Beirut have vehemently argued that the flights violate the UN resolution mandating the ceasefire and UNIFIL's deployment.

The French foreign ministry said Thursday that the UN had been informed of ""movements of arms" on the Syria-Lebanon border, though it added those have not been verified.

The French daily Le Monde quoted a "senior UN figure" saying there was "a constant and massive rearmament of Hezbollah."

"There is a question as to the extent of the sanctions, but there will be sanctions," Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy told RTL radio.

He said the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany "agree on one thing: that there will be a United Nations Security Council resolution backed by all, including China and Russia.

Political directors from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States met in the French capital late Wednesday to talk about what action to take against Iran, which defied a UN deadline of August 31 to cease enriching uranium.

Several of the countries, especially the United States, fear that despite Iran's insistence that it is pursuing civilian nuclear energy ambitions, the programme is in fact designed to build a nuclear arsenal.

Diplomats said the Paris meeting failed to reach agreement among the six countries on what sanctions should be applied.

Russia and China -- which have strong economic interests in Iran -- have tried to water down a draft UN Security Council resolution drawn up by France, Britain and Germany, while the United States has sought to harden it.

The European draft would bar trade with Iran in goods related to its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and impose financial and travel restrictions on persons and agencies involved.

According to diplomats in Paris, Russia -- though willing to back the trade ban -- is still opposed to sanctions being applied to individuals, though it will accept a ban on shipments of sensitive goods.

Tehran has warned it would regard any attempt to thwart its nuclear programme as an "act of hostility".

Douste-Blazy, at a joint media conference with his Israeli counterpart Tzipi Livni, said France was "in a hurry" to see sanctions imposed.

"I think this is about the credibility of the United Nations Security Council," he said.

"To my mind, we are going to find a joint solution to be united behind a resolution," he said, adding that he would soon be speaking by telephone with the foreign ministers of the five other countries involved.

Livni, whose country is especially alarmed over Iran's nuclear ambitions and its expressed wish to see Israel one day wiped off the map, said decisions had to be made quickly, "because the Iranians are trying to stall" to win time to master the nuclear processes underway.

President Jacques Chirac, who also received Livni, reinforced Douste-Blazy's message by insisting on the "importance of solidarity in the international community on this issue concerning Iran," his spokesman said.

Though he held the door open to their inclusion in a regional support group to tackle the Iraq crisis, this could only happen if the two neighbours "faced their responsibilities" and ceased funding terrorists and threw their weight behind Iraq's fragile democracy.

But the direct talks with Tehran seen by some experts as an essential part of a new US strategy remain out of the question, Mr Bush stressed, until the regime verifiably suspended uranium enrichment. British officials later refused to make such a connection, pointing to the full diplomatic relations that exist between London and Tehran.

In the case of Syria - recently visited by Mr Blair's top foreign policy adviser - Mr Bush was equally uncompromising. Any serious discussions between Washington and Damascus depended on Syria not fomenting terrorism against Iraq and ceasing its meddling in Lebanon, he said.

In general Mr Blair sounded distinctly more enthusiastic about the report, welcoming the "strong way forward" it set out. But the President stressed repeatedly that while it was "important," the ISG document was just one among several studies being prepared here, by the State Department, the Pentagon and the National Security Council. "I don't think Jim Baker and Lee Hamilton [the two co-chairmen of the ISG] expect us to accept every recommendation," he said. Mr Baker has admitted as much. But in testimony on Capitol Hill yesterday, the former secretary of state under the first President Bush insisted that "this is probably the only bipartisan report he's going to get." It was vital, he said, "not to treat it like a fruit salad," taking a bit here and a bit there.

Only when he has received and digested their recommendations will Mr Bush announce his new strategy in a major speech, within the next few weeks. But it appeared unlikely yesterday that he would meet the ISG's request for the launch of a new regional diplomatic initiative before the new year.

Yesterday's meeting was a sombre occasion, the first at which the two architects of the war had to confront, head on and in public together, the recent slide towards anarchy in Iraq. A tired-looking Mr Bush acknowledged that the situation was "bad" and "very tough," and that the task ahead was "daunting." But, he warned, the stakes could not be higher. A terrorist-dominated Middle East, he said, represented "an unprecedented threat to civilisation". As unwilling as ever to admit error, he described America's involvement in Iraq as "a noble mission". Unlike the Prime Minister, he spoke explicitly of "victory," insisting that it was "important for the entire world" that the US and Britain prevailed.

The two countries were facing "a difficult moment" in Iraq. But Mr Bush noted that yesterday was the 65th anniversary of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbour, the event that propelled the US into the Second World War, in which Britain and the US had fought side by side. They had faced difficult moments then but had prevailed, just as they would in this conflict.

But differences in emphasis were evident. Mr Bush seemed only half-heartedly to accept the link between the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the crises in Lebanon and Iraq, all of which involve a clash between moderation and extremism, as the Prime Minister believes.

Meanwhile, Mr Blair could be facing a tough sell on his forthcoming trip. The Palestinians have yet to form a unity government between Hamas and Fatah in which the former unconditionally accepts Israel's right to exist. For his part, the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, has rejected any link between Iraq and his own country's "controversies" with the Palestinians, and ruled out an early restart to talks with Syria.

How the Bush/Blair relationship unfolded

February 2001

Tony Blair and George Bush hold their first face-to-face talks at Camp David. Blair is determined to preserve Britain's much-vaunted special relationship.

Summit score: Bush 1, Blair 1.

What happened next: Cordial relations cemented.

September 2001

Mr Blair is first out of the traps, flying to Washington to stand 'shoulder to shoulder' with Bush after the 9/11 attacks. In public, Blair's response looks more assured. In private, he urges Bush not to be hasty.

Summit score: Bush 0, Blair 1.

What happened next: The war in Afghanistan.

April 2002

At a crucial summit in Texas, Blair gives Bush a private pledge that Britain will back his moves to oust Saddam Hussein. They say nothing in public.

Summit score: Bush 4, Blair 0.

What happened next: The long march to war 11 months later begins.

July 2003

After an apparently successful war, the PM is greeted as a hero when he addresses the US Congress. He urges the US to avoid isolationism.

Summit score: Bush 1, Blair 2.

What happened next: En route from Washington to Tokyo he is told that the government scientist David Kelly had disappeared.

November 2004

In the US, Blair wins a public pledge that Bush will expend his 'capital' on breaking the deadlock in the Israel-Palestinian peace process. Bush says a Palestinian state could be created within four years.

Summit score: Bush 0, Blair 1.

What happened next: Not much, to Mr Blair's frustration (again).

May 2006

The leaders acknowledge that the problems in Iraq have lasted much longer than they anticipated but vow to stay the course.

Summit score: Bush O, Blair 0.

What happened next: The insurgency continues.