Ahmadinejad drops Holocaust denial from speech

A day after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad caused an uproar with a speech attacking Israel at a U.N. conference on racism, the U.N. said Tuesday that Ahmadinejad had actually dropped language from the speech that described the Holocaust as “ambiguous and dubious.”

The U.N. and the Iranian Mission in Geneva did not comment on why the change was made. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, however, said he had met with the Iranian president before his speech Monday and reminded him the U.N. had adopted resolutions “to revoke the equation of Zionism with racism and to reaffirm the historical facts of the Holocaust.”

Ahmadinejad may have decided to drop the Holocaust phrase that was in his original text to deliver his condemnation of Israel in a more palatable fashion for many countries.

Still, Ahmadinejad’s accusation that the West used the Holocaust as a “pretext” for aggression against Palestinians still provoked walkouts by delegates including every European Union country in attendance. But others, including those from the Vatican, stayed in the room because they said he stopped short of denying the Holocaust.

The walkout came after Ahmadinejad accused Western nations of complicity in violence against Palestinians surrounding the foundation of Israel.