BERLIN (AFP)--- The German government on Friday summoned the
Iranian charge d’affaires in Berlin to express its opposition to a planned conference on the Holocaust in Tehran next week.

A foreign ministry spokesman, Jens Ploetner, told reporters that Germany had made clear that as the country responsible for the Nazis’ crimes it found any statements questioning Israel’s right to exist or the fact of the Holocaust to be "shocking" and "unacceptable".

"We condemn any attempt, in the past or in the future, to give a forum to those who relativise or question the Holocaust," he told a regular government news conference.

Germany "bears a unique responsibility toward the victims of the Nazis, in particular the victims of the Holocaust," he added.

Neo-nazi prevented to attend conference

Meanwhile a federal court ruled that a former leader of the neo-Nazi
National Democratic Party must turn in his passport to authorities to prevent him from attending the Tehran conference.

The federal administrative court in the southwestern city of Karlsruhe
rejected an appeal by 66-year-old Guenther Deckert against the decision of his local government, saying the image of the German government was at stake.

"The interests of the federal republic could be threatened," a court
spokeswoman said.

Another right-wing extremist, Horst Mahler, was slapped with a travel ban in January to prevent him from attending the Holocaust conference, which was originally planned for the middle of the year.

Mahler is now serving a jail sentence for inciting racial hatred.

Iranian deputy freign mnister Manouchehr Mohammadi said earlier this week the staging of the conference on December 11-12 was a response to the lack of answers to questions posed over the Holocaust by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called the Holocaust a myth and called for the destruction of the state of Israel.

Mohammadi declined to give the names of the 67 international "scholars" he said would be attending over fears their home countries would ban them from traveling to Tehran.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said this week that he would deplore any conference that sought to cast doubt on the reality of the Holocaust, in which the Nazi regime systematically slaughtered six million Jews during World War II.