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US Jewish group urges tough German stance
on Ahmadinejad's World Cup plans
Jun 06
7:50 PM US/Eastern

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A leading US Jewish group has written to German
Chancellor Angela Merkel urging her to take a tough stance against any
plans by football-mad President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to attend the World
Cup.

The head of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center wrote to
Germany's leader on Monday after Iranian officials were quoted by media as
saying their president would attend the football fiesta in Germany if
Iran's team advances to the second stage.

"President Ahmadinejad has denied the Holocaust and called for the
obliteration of the state of Israel," wrote Rabbi Marvin Hier, the
center's founder and dean in the letter to Merkel obtained by AFP.

"It is inconceivable that a head of state who advocates those policies
would be received at a world sporting event by the same country where the
Nuremburg Laws were proclaimed and where Adolf Hitler first enunciated his
policies that led to the 'Final Solution'.

"Such a visit would desecrate the memory of the millions murdered in
the gas chambers and contradict the very foundation upon which the
post-war Federal Republic of Germany was built," Hier added in the
strongly worded letter on behalf of the 400,000 center members.

Hier said the outspoken Iranian's leader presence at the global
gathering would give him a similar public platform to that Hitler assumed
when he hosted the well-attended Berlin Olympics of 1936.

While as a head of state Ahmadinejad does not require an official
invitation from Germany to accept the games, Hier said he believed Berlin
had a "moral obligation to state publicly that his visit would be
unwelcome.

"I feel that the international community, and in this case Germany as
the host country, have to say something and it's not good enough to say
they are hoping he won't come," Hier told AFP, adding it was unacceptable
to say that any World Cup visit by Ahmadinejad would be a matter of
sports, not politics.

Copyright AFP 2005, AFP stories and
photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or
publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any
medium

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