The White House denounced Iran's Holocaust conference, featuring revisionist historians who doubt the World War II-era slaughter, as"an affront to the entire civilized world.""The United States condemns the conference on the Holocaust convoked by the Iranian regime on Monday in Tehran," spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters.

"The gathering of Holocaust deniers in Tehran is an affront to the entire civilized world, as well as to the traditional Iranian values of tolerance and mutual respect," she said.

"While people around the world mark International Human Rights Week and renew the solemn pledges of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which was drafted in the wake of the atrocities of World War II, the Iranian regime perversely seeks to call the historical fact of those atrocities into question and provide a platform for hatred," she said.

Her comments came as Iran pressed on with its controversial conference, even as international outrage mounted over its hosting of revisionist historians who cast doubt on the mass slaughter of six million Jews in World War II.