MADRID — A Spanish newspaper is defending its plans to publish an interview this weekend with a British writer who denies the Holocaust, despite a furious complaint from Israel.

The center-right daily El Mundo plans to run the interview Saturday with David Irving, who served 13 months in prison in Austria after being convicted there in 2006 over charges he denied the Nazis exterminated 6 million Jews.

It is part of a series of six interviews with World War II experts, timed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the war's outbreak...

... Schutz told The Associated Press that Irving lacks any credibility and does not deserve to be in the same interview lineup. It includes Ian Kershaw, a Briton who is a leading biographer of Hitler, and Avner Shalev, director of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Israel.

"To put Irving on the same platform with these people may create an impression, and as a matter of fact it does, that he has the same stand while everyone who knows something about the issue knows that David Irving is nothing but ... a con man," the ambassador said...

... What is more, other controversial opinions expressed in this week's El Mundo interviews have raised no complaints. One is German historian Jorg Friedrich's assertion that Allied air raids on civilians in German cities amounted to murder, Laviana said.

"All we have tried to do in this series of interviews marking the 70th anniversary of the war is seek out the most innovative and surprising positions on the conflict," he said. With the interview, which Laviana described as being of a tough, "hardball" nature, the paper will also publish a piece that debunks some of the data that Irving regularly gives on the Holocaust.

Schutz said Spaniards tend to know less about the war than other Europeans because their country was not directly involved in it, and giving Irving the same outlet as reputable historians "is not helping, to say the least."...

Randll Reese Besch - 9/13/2009

That is what he should be labeled as not a historian. Now he would be one if Nazi Germany had won. But they lost and he must deal with a more open society. There is no excuse for Spain, there are records and books they could read. Just because they hadn't participated in the war doesn't mean they can plead ignorance. Not in the information age, it just doesn't wash!