A group of prominent Jewish leaders, lawmakers, diplomats, and public intellectuals met yesterday to call on the United Nations’s International Court of Justice to charge President Ahmadinejad of Iran with inciting genocide.

The Iranian president, who has vowed to acquire a nuclear capability, publicly advocates Israel’s destruction and this week hosted a two-day conference to cast doubt on whether the Holocaust took place.

America’s outgoing ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton; Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz; a former Canadian minister of justice, Irwin Cotler, and a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Dore Gold, were among those pressing yesterday for Mr. Ahmadinejad’s indictment for his stated objective of “wiping Israel off the map” and other comments threatening the Jewish State and America.

At a gathering sponsored by the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Mr. Cotler said Mr. Ahmadinejad preaches “state-ordered, state-sanctioned, genocidal anti-Semitism” — violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide’s prohibition on inciting genocide. The gathering, which brought out about 150 people, was held at the New York Lawyers Association headquarters in Lower Manhattan.

Like the late president of Serbia and Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, and the late Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, Mr. Ahmadinejad deserves to be put on trial, Mr. Cotler said. Both Milosevic and Pinochet died before being brought to justice.

The Jerusalem Center has released a 68-page report called “Incitement to Commit Genocide: Indictment of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.” It states: “Ahmadinejad’s declaration that the Holocaust was a ‘fairy tale,’ and that his enabling of Hamas and Hizbullah, demonstrate that there is simply no way for his ambitions to be realized without perpetrating a new genocide.” The report was written by human-rights lawyer Justus Reid Weiner and six others including two former Israeli ambassadors and a Holocaust survivor and memoirist, Elie Wiesel.

At yesterday’s meeting, Mr. Dershowitz announced that he was drafting a legal brief justifying the use of preemptive force against Iran if the international community does not act to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. “If the international community fails, we reserve the right of self-defense,” he said.

“If Iran is on the verge of getting a nuclear bomb, it is totally justified to engage in preemptive military action,” Mr. Dershowitz told The New York Sun. “The world need not sit back and wait until Iran develops nuclear weapons.” His legal brief would be ready by late January, Mr. Dershowitz said.

A former Israeli ambassador, Meir Rosenne, urged the world not to dismiss Mr. Ahmadinejad’s loaded and potentially catastrophic threats against Israel. “When 6 million Jews were killed, countries remained silent,” Mr. Rosenne said. “At that time, everyone said they didn’t know. Today, they know, but … they don’t care.” Mr. Rosenne added: “The apathy of the civilized world when it comes to killing Jews is probably a matter of tradition.”

Other speakers drew attention to the international community’s lack of resolve when it comes to genocide, against Jews and others. They cast doubt on the United Nations’s resolve to confront Iran, citing the U.N.’s inaction on the mass murders in Rwanda, Bosnia, and the Darfur region of Sudan.

The editor-in-chief of the New Republic, Martin Peretz, said some nations, such as Russia, are intent on denying the danger of Iran.

Mr. Peretz called the outgoing U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan,”a handmaiden to Darfur” and compared a former secretary of state, James Baker, to Prime Minister Chamberlain of Britain, who advocated appeasing Adolf Hitler. Mr. Baker heads up the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan commission that has urged America to engage in dialogue with Iran and Syria.

Rep. Charles Rangel, a Democrat of New York, said Mr. Ahmadinejad threatens far more than Israel and Jews and urged “the whole world to condemn this” before it’s too late. “They believe they can wipe out anyone they want if they have the nuclear capability,” he said. He added: “Where is our outrage?” Mr. Rangel asked. “Where is the Catholic Church, the Protestant Council, the Muslims that are here?”