Iran says it will hold a conference to examine and debate evidence about the Holocaust, which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently called a "myth."

Iran's Foreign Ministry announced the conference on Sunday, in a move that was widely viewed as a further step in Ahmadinejad's campaign against Israel.

It seemed likely to further escalate tensions between Iran and many Western powers, only a few days after Tehran drew international condemnation by resuming small-scale nuclear enrichment activities.

Ahmadinejad claims the Holocaust was a \
Ahmadinejad claims the Holocaust was a "myth" created by the West to justify establishing Israel in the Middle East. (AP File Photo)

"Iran's Foreign Ministry has decided to hold a conference on the Holocaust to assess its scale by scientific means and discuss its consequences," a ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, told a news conference on Sunday.

He didn't say when the conference would be held or who would be expected to attend.

Six million European Jews were killed by the Nazis during the Second World War.

But Ahmadinejad said in December that the Holocaust was a "myth," saying it was created by Western powers to justify the creation of Israel in the heart of the Islamic world.

The hard-line president has also called Israel a "tumour" that must be "wiped off the map" and suggested the country be moved to North America or Germany.

Ahmadinejad, who was elected by a landslide in June 2005, had already angered Western powers earlier in the week by allowing Iranian officials to remove UN seals on three nuclear facilities, ending a 2½-year freeze.

The United States, European Union countries and Japan fear Iran wants to produce nuclear weapons.

They have been pushing the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to refer the matter to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.

Tehran has insisted it is only interested in using its nuclear program to generate electricity.