THE UN Secretary-General wrapped up a controversial two-day visit to Iran yesterday with no visible progress on the nuclear stand-off, but he used the opportunity to challenge the Islamic Government’s denial of the Holocaust.

Kofi Annan held face-to-face talks with President Ahmadinejad in his first trip to the country since the Iranian leader said that Israel should be wiped off the map and called the Holocaust a myth.

Mr Annan won assurances that Tehran, a sponsor of Hezbollah, would co-operate with the UN peace plan for Lebanon – the main objective of his ten-day Middle East trip.

But the Islamic Government again rejected UN demands that it halt its uranium enrichment work and clashed with Mr Annan over the Holocaust.

Mr Annan went ahead with his trip to Iran despite even though Tehran last week ignored a deadline set by the 15-nation Security Council to suspend uranium enrichment because, it is feared, it is trying to develop nuclear weapons.

In an interview with Le Monde, Mr Annan defended his decision to go to Tehran on a swing through the Middle East that also includes Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey. “As Secretary-General, if I refuse to speak to leaders because I don’t like what they have said, I can’t do my job,” he said.

The UN chief’s delegation spent 90 minutes talking to President Ahmadinejad’s team, and Mr Annan then spoke privately to the Iranian leader in a 10-minute tête-à-tête.

Afterwards, Mr Annan said that the Iranian leader had pledged to support the UN peace plan for Lebanon set out in Resolution 1701 and “agrees with me that we should do everything to strengthen the territorial integrity of Lebanon, the independence of Lebanon and work together for the reconstruction of Lebanon”.

But Ahmad Fawzi, a UN spokesman, said that Mr Annan and Mr Ahmadinejad did not specifically discuss the UN arms embargo on Hezbollah, which Iran is suspected of supplying with weapons.

Instead, the UN was relying on a promise of co-operation by Manouchehr Mottaki, the Foreign Minister, at a Saturday meeting at which the subject of the arms embargo came up.

“The one line we came out of that meeting with was, ‘Despite whatever objections we have to the resolution, you will have, Mr Secretary-General, our full co-operation’,” Mr Fawzi said.But Iran again rebuffed the UN demand that it suspend uranium enrichment as a precondition for negotiations with the UN’s five veto powers – Britain, China, France, Russia and America — plus Germany.

Mr Annan urged Iran to make a confidence-building gesture, without specifying what that should be, Mr Fawzi said.

“I have had very good discussions here, and I think it has helped me further understand the position of Iran, which I will be able to discuss with key governments and the Security Council members when I get back,” Mr Annan told reporters. “The decision is in the hands of the Atomic Agency and others. But I will play my role as Secretary-General.” The UN chief used his meeting with President Ahmadinejad to voice his concern about an Iranian exhibition of cartoons about the Holocaust, mounted in retaliation to Danish cartoons lampooning Islam.

“I think that the tragedy of the Holocaust is a sad and undeniable historical fact. So we should handle that and teach children what happened in World War II and ensure that it is never repeated,” Mr Annan said afterwards.

But Iran countered by announcing that it would sponsor a conference this autumn to examine the evidence supporting the Nazi genocide of the Jews.

“Different opinions which affirm and reject the Holocaust can attend the conference,” Hamid Reza Asefi, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, told reporters.

“I saw several of these camps in East Germany and Poland. In my opinion it has been greatly exaggerated,” he added.

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