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| By Associated Press February 15, 2005 |
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London Mayor Ken Livingstone refused Tuesday to apologize for comparing a Jewish newspaper reporter to a Nazi concentration camp guard.
Jewish and Holocaust groups have urged Livingstone to say he is sorry, as have Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell and the London Assembly, the body that scrutinizes the mayor's work.
But Livingstone told a news conference that he didn't believe he had done anything wrong.
"You may think my remarks to that reporter - and many over the years - are offensive," he said. "That is purely a matter of judgment. If you think they are racist I think you are wrong."
Livingstone made the comments last week when he was approached by a reporter for the Evening Standard newspaper at a reception for the gay and lesbian community.
The mayor, an outspoken left-winger nicknamed Red Ken, has no love of the paper and its conservative sister paper, the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail had a pro-Nazi editorial line in the 1930s, and Livingstone asked journalist Oliver Finegold if he had been a "German war criminal."
Finegold replied that he was Jewish. Livingstone told the reporter he was "just like a concentration camp guard. You're just doing it because you're paid to, aren't you?"
The conversation was recorded on tape and played before the London Assembly on Monday. The body passed a unanimous motion calling on the mayor to withdraw his remarks.
It said that, despite Livingstone's record in fighting racism, his remarks damaged his credibility, offended the Jewish community and probably hurt London's chances of hosting the 2012 Olympics.
A major Jewish group, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, has made an official complaint to local government watchdogs to demand an investigation into the mayor's comments.
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