Spain daily to run interview with Holocaust denier

By DANIEL WOOLLS, Associated Press Writer

MADRID – A Spanish newspaper is defending its plans to publish an interview this coming weekend with a British writer who denies the Holocaust, despite a furious complaint from Israel.

The center-right daily El Mundo plans to run the interview with David Irving, who served 13 months in prison in Austria after being convicted there in 2006 over charges he denied the Nazis exterminated 6 million Jews, on Saturday.

It is part of a series of six interviews with World War II experts, timed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the war's outbreak.

El Mundo said Thursday it wants to publish "innovative" views on World War II for the anniversary. El Mundo rejects Israel's assertion that this is a case where freedom of speech should be limited, the paper's deputy editor Juan Carlos Laviana said.

Israeli Ambassador Raphael Schutz condemned the newspaper's plans as an insult to its readers, to those historians and to the concept of free speech.

Schutz told The Associated Press that Irving lacks any credibility and does not deserve to be in the same interview lineup. It includes Ian Kershaw, a Briton who is a leading biographer of Hitler, and Avner Shalev, director of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Israel.

"To put Irving on the same platform with these people may create an impression, and as a matter of fact it does, that he has the same stand while everyone who knows something about the issue knows that David Irving is nothing but ... a liar and a con man," the ambassador said.