Lebanon’s Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri said Friday that the controversial Holocaust Revisionist Conference will not be held in Beirut, reported the Daily Star newspaper.
“Lebanon has more important things to do than holding conferences that hurt its international standing and smear its name,” Hariri said, adding that “we’re looking for the future. We’re looking to establish a better climate.”
For weeks, the decision of American and Swiss organizers to hold the four-day conference in Beirut, the first of its kind in an Arab capital, has raised many eyebrows in the international media and among Jewish lobby groups, Arab intellectuals, and the Lebanese authorities.
Information Minister Ghazi Aridi told the paper that he had no knowledge that the conference was going to be held because the organizers, the Swiss-based Verite et Justice and the California-based Institute for Historical Review, never applied for permission.
Aridi said that in order for foreigners to hold conferences in Lebanon, organizers are obliged to explain who they are, the reasons for holding the conference, the timing and the goals involved, the daily said.
Mark Weber, the director of the Institute for Historical Review, said the ban was “an outrageous assault against freedom of speech and expression.”
He added that while Verite et Justice is taking the reins in organizing the conference, he was unaware that a permit was necessary.
Weber told the paper that he considered as correct reports that the US State Department, by way of Ambassador David Satterfield, threatened to cut aid and “change it’s attitude toward Lebanon” if the conference was held, the paper quoted him as saying.
The US Embassy declined to comment when contacted by the paper, but Aridi said there had been no contact with the embassy on the issue.
Weber, who has held Holocaust revisionist conferences in the United States, claimed the Lebanese authorities would not admit that the United States applied pressure on them because “they’re embarrassed that they’re being bullied.”
According to the paper, little information was known about the conference, which was scheduled to be held from March 31 to April 3.
Participants would only be told the location of the conference by contacting a number given to them upon arrival at Beirut International Airport, said the paper.
They also needed to present someone who could “vouch for their good intentions,” and journalists had to pass heavy screening – Albawaba.com
