TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – Iran on Monday opened a conference that it said would examine whether the Holocaust took place, claiming the meeting was an opportunity to discuss the World War II genocide in an atmosphere free of what it termed Western taboos.

The conference was initiated by President Ahmadinejad, who has described the Holocaust as a “myth” and called for Israel to be wiped off the map. Even before it opened, the gathering was condemned by Germany, America, and Israel.

The meeting coincided with an independently convened conference on the Holocaust in Berlin, where historians affirmed the accuracy of the Nazi genocide data and questioned the motives of those behind the Tehran forum.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry’s Institute for Political and International Studies said its two-day conference has drawn 67 foreign researchers from 30 countries.

In his opening speech, the institute’s chief, Rasoul Mousavi, said the conference provided an opportunity to discuss “questions” about the Holocaust away from Western taboos and the restrictions imposed on scholars in Europe.

In Germany, Austria and France, it is illegal to deny the Holocaust.

“This conference seeks neither to deny nor prove the Holocaust,” Mr. Mousavi said. “It is just to provide an appropriate scientific atmosphere for scholars to offer their opinions in freedom about a historical issue.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki dismissed the foreign criticism as “predictable,” telling conference delegates there was “no logical reason for opposing this conference.”

“The objective for organizing this conference is to create an atmosphere to raise various opinions about a historical issue. We are not seeking to deny or prove the Holocaust,” Mr. Mottaki said.

“If the official version of the Holocaust is thrown into doubt, then the identity and nature of Israel will be thrown into doubt. And if, during this review, it is proved that the Holocaust was a historical reality, then what is the reason for the Muslim people of the region and the Palestinians having to pay the cost of the Nazis’ crimes?” Mr. Mottaki asked.

In Israel, Prime Minister Olmert called the conference “a sick phenomenon.”

Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, issued a statement condemning the Tehran conference as an attempt to “paint (an) extremist agenda with a scholarly brush.”

The leading Israeli novelist and peace activist, Amos Oz, denounced the meeting.

“I think the conference in Iran is a sick joke, and I hope it will be received with revulsion and disgust everywhere in the world,” Mr. Oz said.

Among the participants were the prominent French holocaust denier, Robert Faurisson, and six members of the group Jews United Against Zionism, who were dressed in the traditional long black coats and black hats of Orthodox Jews.

The Jews, two of whom said they were rabbis, came from America, Britain, and Austria.

Mr. Ahmadinejad has repeatedly questioned why the Holocaust has been used to justify the creation of Israel at the cost of Palestinian lands – a view popular among Iranian hard-liners.

At the Berlin conference, the historian Raul Hilberg, author of landmark three-volume “The Destruction of the European Jews,” said that figures for the Holocaust are largely based on records kept by the perpetrators, such as the SS division of the Nazi German army.

“This is not a figment of the imagination. This comes from the Germans themselves, and therefore any denial of these figures is absolutely senseless,” Mr. Hilberg told the conference.

Wolfgang Benz, head of the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism at Berlin’s Technical University, said people who deny the Holocaust “know perfectly well what happened.”

“They want to use what happened – through denying it – to effect something else, to articulate the crude old anti-Semitism against Israel.”

David Menashri of the Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University said Ahmadinejad’s denial of the Holocaust was linked to his nuclear ambitions.

“Ahmadinejad’s main concern today is to gain nuclear weapons for Iran. And somehow he believes that by raising the issues about Israel, wiping Israel out of the map, and denying the Holocaust, he will portray the image to countries like Germany and Europe that his main intention is against the Jews.”

“He believes that if he is only against the Jews, then the world will be tolerant,” Menashri said.

Iran, which denies seeking nuclear weapons, has spent months preparing for the conference, even publicizing it during the September visit to Tehran of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who contradicted his hosts by saying the Holocaust was a historical fact and that an exhibition of anti-Holocaust cartoons, then on display in the city, promoted hatred.