UK-Iran spat over Holocaust intensifies

Iran on Wednesday said it was willing to send a team of "independent investigators" to visit former Nazi deaths camps across Europe.

Iran on Wednesday said it was willing to send a team of "independent investigators" to visit former Nazi deaths camps across Europe -- but not President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has described the Holocaust as a "myth".

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"We welcome the proposal by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to visit the Holocaust sites," Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was quoted as saying by the official news agency IRNA.

"We are ready to send teams of independent investigators to the places Mr Blair speaks of," he said, but said these teams would comprise of people "who are not sympathetic to those who committed the crimes and who are not sympahetic to the Zionist regime (Israel)."

On Monday, Blair lashed out at an Iranian foreign ministry plan to stage a conference questioning the Holocaust as "shocking, ridiculous, stupid".

He also said Ahmadinejad "should come and see the evidence of the Holocaust himself in the countries of Europe".

But Mottaki said he also "regretted the inappropriate language" used by the British prime minister.