Highlights from the world's press

Compiled by Ravi Agrawal for CNN

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(CNN) -- A two day conference is being held in Iran to examine whether the Holocaust actually happened. Participants include well known revisionist Western academics, and a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has condemned the conference as a "sick phenomenon" while Norbert Lammer, the president of the German parliament, has written a letter to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad condemning the event as "anti-Semitic propaganda under the pretext of scientific freedom."

The Tehran Times reports the country's foreign minister Manuchehr Mottaki as saying the conference is bring held to provide an opportunity for the "airing of different views on an historical event."

"We are neither trying to prove nor deny the holocaust," Mottaki explained. "Even if the Holocaust is proven to be a historical fact, why should the inhabitants of Palestine pay the penalty for the Nazi crimes?"

In the UK, The Times says the event is an affront to history and to humanity.

"As even embarrassed Iranians realize, the conference is a disgrace, a grotesque attempt to relativize, if not deny, a crime against humanity. Far from giving those in the Middle East a chance to discuss this historical event (a chance all too rarely given in their own countries), the organizers have already censored the proceedings by denying a visa to an outspoken Palestinian lawyer who said that denials of the 'monstrous horror' harmed the Palestinian cause."

Robert Rozett writes in The Jerusalem Post that the fact such an event is taking place in mind-numbing.

"Words are inadequate to express the feeling of insult, sacrilege and anger that I feel when Ahmadinejad and his ilk call this history into question. It is my family's history, the history of my people, and the shared history of much of the world... Denying and ridiculing the Holocaust and refusing to comply with international conventions regarding developing nuclear capabilities are merely expressions of the same arrogance, born of ignorance."

Pinochet reaction

In The New York Times, Ariel Dorfman asks whether Chile's former dictator Augusto Pinochet is really dead: can Chile bury the past and move on?

"In order to cleanse his image from our land, we would have had to witness him looking into the face of each and every one of his victims, the mothers whose children he disappeared, the wives whose husbands he massacred, the sons who were persecuted and exiled. In order to be rid of his dire influence, we should have left the job of mourning him to his family and few close friends. Instead we must watch the sad spectacle of one-third of the country lamenting his departure, one-third of Chile still silent accomplices to his crimes, still justifying his crimes, still rejoicing that the general overthrew Salvador Allende, the constitutional president of Chile."

In the UK's Guardian, Roger Burbach describes the irony of the fact that Pinochet died on the International Day of Human Rights, as well as U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's last day in office.

"In Chile, President Michele Bachelet, whose father died in prison under Pinochet, has refused to grant the ex-dictator a state funeral. Only military bands will play at his interment. Eduardo Contreras, a Chilean human rights lawyer, declared: 'Pinochet should be buried as a common criminal,' adding, 'The dictator died on December 10, the International Day of Human Rights. It is as if humanity chose this special moment to weigh in with its final judgment, declaring 'enough' for the dictator.'"

Pakistan's Dawn discusses how for many, the regret is that Pinochet escaped justice in his lifetime for heading one of the most repressive governments in South America.

"It was around this time that the wheels of justice started catching up with him. While on a trip to Britain, he was detained for 18 months following an extradition request issued by a Spanish court on charges of human rights violations. Eventually, he was allowed to return home on health grounds but from then on the Chilean courts swung into action by stripping him of his legal immunity and allowing criminal suits to be brought against him. Although he died before the ends of justice could be met, Pinochet's last years were marked by an agony that led him to accept 'political responsibility' for the deeds of his regime, days before his death. With democracy returned to Chile, it is to be hoped that its people will put the past behind them and close one of the darkest chapters of tyrannical rule in South America."

The International Herald Tribune has an opinion piece by Reed Brody, where the writer says that while Pinochet died without standing trial, justice has caught up with the former dictator in every other sense -- the "Pinochet precedent" has made the world a smaller place for the prepetrators of the worst atrocities.

"The Pinochet case inspired victims of abuse in country after country, particularly in Latin America, to challenge the transitional arrangements of the 1980s and 1990s that had allowed the perpetrators of atrocities to go unpunished and, often, to remain in power. Argentina's Supreme Court last year struck down immunity laws for former officials, and dozens now face investigation and trial for crimes during Argentina's 1976-1983 dictatorship... The final frontier has yet to be breached, however. Until now, Western leaders have seemed immune from international justice, leading many rightly to protest about double standards. The most important test case now under way is a complaint filed last month in Germany against Donald Rumsfeld and other U.S. policy makers for alleged war crimes at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. Rumsfeld's role in approving the use of illegal interrogation techniques such as 'waterboarding' and the terrorizing of detainees with guard dogs is no longer in doubt."

Trouble in Lebanon

David Ignatius writes in The Washington Post that with more than a half-million pro-Hezbollah demonstrators chanting "Death to America!" and "Death to Israel!" in the heart of Beirut on Sunday, the Lebanese capital looked more like a vision of Tehran.

"The very incongruity of this scene, in the most Westernized city in the Arab world, makes me wonder if Hezbollah is overplaying its hand in its campaign to oust the pro-American government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora. America isn't very popular here, after its ally Israel bombed the country's infrastructure last summer in reprisal for Hezbollah's kidnapping of several Israeli soldiers. But for all their anger at America and Israel, the Lebanese aren't likely to defect to the Iranian camp."

Beirut's Daily Star says Lebanon's current political crisis is a reminder of the country's enduring polarization along political and confessional fault lines, representing a struggle between two fundamentally different visions for the country.

"Lebanon's fragile and rigid political system... is vulnerable to cyclical crises and does not guarantee government stability or avoid periodic confrontation and political stalemate. Coupled with political and sectarian clientelism, the delicate balance of power-sharing in the system often leads to political deadlock, which usually requires outside mediation to undo. For the second time in just over 15 years Lebanon faces the risk of civil strife."