UN Chief Ban Ki-Moon opened the highly controversial UN Racism Conference on Monday in Geneva, Switzerland. He expressed his disappointment with the fact that nine nations, including Israel, had decided to boycott the conference, but at the same time expressed his opposition to all forms of Holocaust denial and Anti-Semitism.

Ban also spoke about his fear that the economic crisis would lead to worse incidents of racism, and possibly even a full-scale political crisis in some countries. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has both denied the Holocaust and called for Israel to be “wiped off the map”, is scheduled to address the conference later in the afternoon.