Tehran - The government of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday began construction of a new cultural and sports centre for the Jews in Iran, the IRNA news agency reported. Housing minister Mohammad Saeidikia and Jewish MP Maurice Motamed were present at the inauguration ceremony of the 6,800 square-metre project due to be finished by 2010, IRNA said.
Saeidikia stressed at the ceremony that the country's religious minorities had the constitutional right to follow their religion, and dismissed charges of discrimination.
More than 100,000 Jews lived in Iran before the 1979 Islamic revolution, but following the formation of the Islamic Republic, more than 75 per cent left, leaving about 25,000 Jews in Iran.
Iranian Jews were angered last year by the holding of the controversial Holocaust conference and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad terming the Holocaust a "fairy tale."
Motamed, sole Jewish MP in the Iranian parliament, at the time termed the conference as an insult "not only towards the Jews in Iran but also worldwide, as it is widely known that we are quite sensitive as far as the Holocaust is concerned."
Although the Iranian administration has constantly called for a distinction to be made between Jews and the "Zionist government", some remarks against Israel are widely interpreted as anti-Semitic.
