08:14:23 EST Dec 16, 2005
ATHENS (AP) – Iran’s interior minister on Friday said widely condemned remarks by the Iranian president on Israel and the Holocaust had been “misunderstood” by western governments.

“(President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) did not mean to raise this matter,” Mostafa Pur Mohammadi told The Associated Press on the sidelines of an Athens conference on immigration.

“He wanted to say that if certain people have created troubles for the Jewish community they should bear the expenses, and it is not others who should pay for that,” he said, speaking through a translator. more.