Romania to hold fence-mending talks with Israel over Holocaust row

BUCHAREST, July 28 (AFP) - Romania's foreign minister moved on Monday to defuse a blistering row with Israel over remarks by President Ion Iliescu about the Holocaust, promising fence-mending talks with his Israeli counterpart soon.

The olive branch offered by Foreign Minister Mircea Geoana to Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom comes after Iliescu sparked a diplomatic furore when he told Israeli newspaper Haaretz that "the Jews were not the only victims of the Holocaust".

"Bucharest wishes to take concrete steps to reconfirm its determination to promote tolerance and fight expressions of anti-Semitism and xenophobia," a foreign ministry said on Monday.

The talks could take place in the United States, where Geoana is currently travelling, should Shalom decide to join Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on an official trip to Washington this week, a foreign ministry spokesman said.

Otherwise, the discussion is likely to take place over the telephone.

Romania has been frantically backpedalling since Iliescu's comments last week, which prompted furious Israeli authorities to summon the Romanian ambassador to Israel, Valeria Mariana, for the second time in six weeks.

She had already been called in last month over a government claim that there had been no Holocaust in Romania during the war, when the country was ruled by a pro-Nazi dictator widely held responsible for the deaths of 250,000 Jews.

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Note: Last sentence of the article:
"The Nazi regime in Germany killed millions of non-Jews during World War II, including Poles and leftists, but Israel insists that the term Holocaust be reserved for the six million Jews estimated to have lost their lives."

Which is exactly what i�ve trying to say time ago but people just thinks that u are a racist just for say stuff like that, well i guess nobody talks about the other millions that die that weren�t jews, no spielberg films about them, no discovery channel documentry about them, no books, etc etc Does that mean that they never died?