Jewish leaders want Ahmadinejad banned in Europe

The European Jewish Congress, meeting at the weekend in Vienna, agreed to make a formal request soon to the European Parliament asking European Union member states to declare him "persona non grata," the group said in a statement on Tuesday.

"Sixty years after the Shoah, the Iranian president must not set foot on the continent where he claims the Holocaust did not take place," it quoted EJC President Pierre Besnainou as saying.

He said Ahmadinejad's repeated statements denying or casting doubt on the Holocaust violated laws in some European countries which make it a crime to deny that six million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki denied on Monday that Tehran wanted to see Israel "wiped off the map."

"Nobody can remove a country from the map. This is a misunderstanding in Europe of what our president mentioned," Mottaki told a news conference in Brussels, speaking in English.

"How is it possible to remove a country from the map? He is talking about the regime. We do not recognize legally this regime," he said.

Mottaki also acknowledged the reality of the Holocaust, telling the European Parliament foreign affairs committee: "Our friends in Europe stress that such a crime has taken place and they have stated certain figures that were actually suffered. We have no argument about that, but what we are saying here is -- to put right such a horrific event, why should the Muslims pay a price?"

The EJC also urged the European Union not to negotiate with Hamas, which won recent Palestinian parliamentary elections, until the militant Islamist group "recognises Israel and abandons terrorism as a policy."

The EJC is made up of leaders of national Jewish organisations in 40 countries, representing 2.5 million Jews across Europe.

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