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UN Watch, a Geneva-based advocacy group that lobbies in favour of Israel, has said the United Nations special commissioner for human rights Navi Pillay should condemn Iran's 'shocking endorsement of Holocaust denial' made during a U.N. meeting on racism.

At the same time in New York, Jewish organizations urged U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to prevent U.N. General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, a Nicaraguan who is a Roman Catholic priest, from speaking at the 27 January Shoah memorial service, for fear he might use the event to compare Israel's action to those of the Nazis

'Ambassador d'Escoto's extreme anti-Israel statements violate the very essence of the Holocaust commemoration,' the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations said in a statement. 'We would hope that Ambassador d'Escoto would choose not to be present so that the sacred intent of the commemoration is maintained.'

In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly designated 27 January as International Holocaust Memorial day to remember million of victims of the Nazi era at the time of the Second World War.

A Jewish group that monitors the United Nations, Eye on the U.N., said the Geneva meeting held 19 to 23 January was an 'anti-racism forum providing a platform for anti-semites'.

'The Durban II planning committee, now meeting in Geneva, today took up the Holocaust sections of the 'draft outcome document',' it said. 'In final form it is scheduled for adoption at the April Conference. Anne Bayefsky, editor of Eye on the U.N., commented: 'The Durban II platform was the perfect opportunity for Iran and Syria to deny the facts of the Holocaust.' This, she said, was 'apparently the U.N.'s idea of combating racism.'

U.N. Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said many of the sentiments in speeches on a draft declaration for an anti-racism conference at the U.N., dubbed Durban II, were calls to restrict free speech and to prohibit expression deemed offensive to Islamic sensitivities. He said their portrayal of counter-terrorism efforts by the U.S., Western states and Israel were essentially 'racist'.

'Ban Ki-moon and High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay - the most vocal defender of the Durban II process - have a moral obligation to condemn this ugly display of anti-Semitism within a conference supposedly opposed to racism,' said Neuer of the hearings that were chaired by Russia.

'So far, High Commissioner Pillay has for some reason reserved all of her criticism for Western states that expressed concerns about the conference's direction,' said Neuer. 'We trust that she will not give a free pass to Libya, Iran, Cuba, and other anti-democratic regimes, who this week attacked free speech and misused human rights principles. She must end her silence and resist the campaign by the world's most intolerant regimes to hijack the anti-racism cause for dangerous political ends,' said Neuer.

U.N. Watch noted in its statement: 'Discussing proposed Paragraph 29 which provides that the Holocaust must never be forgotten and mentions that it resulted in the murder of one third of the Jewish people, South Africa for the African Group asked that the paragraph be minimised, conforming to the Durban I declaration, to simply say, 'Recalls that the Holocaust never be forgotten,' without mentioning that it resulted in the murder of one third of the Jewish people.

'South Africa's proposal was supported by Jamaica and Iran. Syria also supported the proposal, saying, 'I don't think we should get into a kind of statistical debate. As far as I [the Syrian representative] know that there is no agreement on the consensus on the percentage of those who perished in the Holocaust'.'