Tehran (Iran): Iran's president, who last October said Israel "must be wiped off the map," stoked tensions with the Jewish state on Friday by saying, "The Zionist regime is a dying tree, and soon its branches will be broken down."
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a speech that Israel remains a threat to Islamic countries.
"The existence of the Zionist regime is tantamount to an imposition of an unending and unrestrained threat so that none of the nations and Islamic countries of the region and beyond can feel secure from its threat," he said.
The President's remarks came as Western nations pressured Tehran to halt its uranium enrichment program, something the United States, Israel and others say can lead to the production of nuclear weapons.
Iran says the nuclear program is only for power production, but Israel's chief of military intelligence, Major General Amos Yadlin, said on Wednesday it could lead to an Iranian nuclear weapon by the end of the decade.
In his October speech, Ahmadinejad said, "The new wave of confrontations generated in Palestine and the growing turmoil in the Islamic world would in no time wipe Israel away."
In December, Ahmadinejad continued the verbal assault against Israel, calling the Holocaust a myth.
"They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred and place this above God, religions and the prophets," Ahmadinejad said in the December speech.
"If you have burned the Jews, why don't you give a piece of Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to Israel?"
Friday he again questioned the killing of millions of Jews during World War II.
"If such a tragedy were true," said Ahmadinejad, "why with force, by killing, does it have to be compensated?"
Ahmadinejad was addressing a room full of representatives from Middle Eastern and some African nations for a gathering billed as a conference on Jerusalem and support for the rights of the Palestinian people.
He described the Holocaust - in which 6 million Jews and millions of others were killed by the Nazis - as a 'story' that many countries believe.
Ahmadinejad said Palestinians are being subjected to a holocaust.
"And is this holocaust worse than or less bad than the holocaust you claim that has taken place? There is no doubt in the holocaust that exists in Palestine at the moment, and has been existing for the last 60 years."
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US and European leaders have pointed to Ahmadinejad's comments on the Holocaust and his calls for the destruction of Israel as signs that Iran must be prevented from securing nuclear weapons.
US State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, echoed those concerns on Friday, calling Ahmadinejad's most-recent remarks more reprehensible rhetoric.
"This is the kind of rhetoric I think that has only added to the fears and concerns of the international community as it relates to Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon," McCormack said.
"If you think about it, you have the elected head of state calling for the annihilation of another state. That is not only, as I said, reprehensible, but a source of grave concern for the entire international community."
The UN Security Council has given Iran until the end of April to suspend uranium enrichment.
On Friday, Ahmadinejad slammed the United States and other countries as against the advancement of technology and science in Iran.
"The governments who use force become obstacles to the progress of other countries. They do not allow the countries in the region to follow the path of progress and advancement," Ahmadinejad complained.
International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei met with Iranian officials on Thursday.
Afterward, he said Tehran had not agreed to international demands that it halt uranium enrichment, but he also said the issue was not urgent.
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