TEHRAN, Iran - 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 Mahmoud 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, the United States 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,” Mousavi said. “It is just to provide an appropriate scientific atmosphere for scholars to offer their opinions in freedom about a historical issue.”

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