Institutes sever ties with Iran over forum

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PARIS, Dec. 16 (UPI) -- Some of the world's leading policy institutes have broken ties with the Iranian Foreign Ministry group that organized a Holocaust denial conference in Tehran.

The institutes said in a statement that the Iranian ministry's Institute for Political and International Studies, which had served "as a mainstream Iranian interface with foreign think tanks and research institutes," was no longer an acceptable partner.

The 34 signers of the statement included the directors of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London; the Aspen Institute Berlin; the German Marshall Fund in Washington; the Geneva Center for Security Policy; the Center for International Studies and Research in Paris; the United States Studies Center in Sydney and the Center for International Relations in Warsaw, The New York Times reported Saturday.

"This is about morality and about academic standards," said Francois Heisbourg, head of the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris, who wrote the statement and began circulating it Wednesday.

The conference featured discredited academics and Holocaust deniers.