Ahmadinejad: Israel is abusing 'big deception' of the Holocaust

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has once again called the Holocaust a big deception in his latest denunciations of Israel and its allies.

The comments come amid a fierce election campaign in which his firebrand style has come under attack from challengers.

Ahmadinejad's main pro-reform rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi, has said the president's constant questioning of the Holocaust has undermined Iran's international standing.

Ahmadinejad told a gathering of international scholars Wednesday that Israel uses the "big deception" of the Holocaust to sway allies in the West.

Late last week Ahmadinejad told a radio program in Tehran that "the Holocaust is the West's Achilles heel and its biggest weakness," Israel Radio reported.

"We will never surrender to bullying powers, and those who think that we might make any compromise and give in to Western pressures and psychological war are badly mistaken," Ahmadinejad said.

"The West has taken the issue of the Holocaust to expose a hypocritical innocence and oppress other nations, but I have effectively attacked this weak point of the West."

Remarks by Ahmadinejad such as eradicating Israel from the Middle East, relocating the Jewish state to Europe and the United States and questioning the historic dimensions of the Holocaust caused widespread international condemnation.

Ahmadinejad, who is seeking a second four-year term in next month's vote, also rejected any compromise with world powers in the nuclear dispute.