Several websites reported Monday that the head of Iran's Jewish community has criticized Ahmadinejad for denying the Holocaust.

"How could one close his eyes to all the undeniable evidence of the expulsion and massacre of Jews in Europe and WWII," the head of the community, Harun Yashayai, said in the letter reportedly sent to Ahmadinejad on January 26.

Yashayai was unavailable for immediate comment about the letter.

Iran's Jewish community, once an 80,000-strong minority, has dwindled to some 25,000 people after the 1979 Islamic revolution. Most Jews have left Iran for the United States or Israel.

Meanwhile, a controversial contest for cartoons of the Holocaust was launched in Iran on Monday in a tit-for-tat move over the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed that have enflamed Muslims worldwide.

The first entry was said to be from renowned Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig, according to the website organising the competition with Iran's biggest selling newspaper Hamshahri, triggering outrage in the United States and Germany in particular.

“As a show of solidarity with the Muslim world, and an exercise in free speech, I would like to submit a cartoon to you on the theme of the Holocaust," Leunig was quoted as saying in a statement on the www.Irancartoons.com website.

Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already prompted international anger by dismissing the systematic slaughter by the Nazis of mainland Europe's Jews as a "myth" used to justify the creation of Israel.

The first of Leunig's two cartoons on the website show a poor man with a Star of David on his back walking towards the Auschwitz death camp in 1945 with the words "Work Brings Freedom" over the entrance.

The second shows the same scene but depicting "Israel 2002" with the slogan "War Brings Peace" over entrance and the same man walking towards it bearing a rifle.

"I have had some difficulty getting this work published in my own country, and I believe it would help highlight the hypocrisy of the West's attitude to free speech if you were to publish it," the Melbourne-based Leunig was quoted as saying.

Iranian directors of a controversial Holocaust cartoon competition seen during a press conference in Tehran. AFP Copyright 2006

Limit on freedom of expression

Hamshahri, which is published by Tehran's conservative municipality, said the contest was officially launched on Monday with the title "What is the limit on freedom of expression in the West?"

Its graphics editor Farid Mortazavi said earlier this month that the aim was to turn the tables on the assertion that newspapers can print offensive material in the name of freedom of expression.

Anger over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, first published in Denmark in September, has boiled over into violent demonstrations across much of the Muslim world.

"Freedom of expression has always been a pretext for Westerners... to insult the beliefs of Muslims," Hamshahri charged in its advertisement for the contest.

"This assault is taking place while criticizing many issues such as the crimes of the United States and Israel as well as historical events like the Holocaust are seen as an unforgivable crime all over the West."

Iran's fiercely anti-Israeli regime is supportive of so-called Holocaust revisionist historians, who maintain the systematic slaughter by the Nazis of mainland Europe's Jews as well as other groups during World War II has been either invented or exaggerated.

The newspaper said the contest was open until May 5. It did not announce that the prize would be but said each artist would receive a book of the cartoons submitted.

Austrian Chancellor condemns

Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel, whose country currently chairs the European Union, condemned the publication of the Holocaust cartoon.

« The misuse of symbols and the violation of taboos such as the Holocaust, must be condemned, » he said after a meeting in Vienna with representatives of the Christian, Jewish and Muslim faiths.

The reaction to the publication of the Muhammad caricatures by European newspapers « must be balanced », he added.

He said the EU wants « to demonstrate comprehension towards the feelings of the Muslims but also to show its determination to maintain its way of life.»

On Saturday, the EU Austrian presidency firmly condemned statements by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who called the Holocaust a « myth.”