British Holocaust-denier bishop appears in video

A renegade British Catholic bishop summoned to trial for denying the Holocaust has appeared in an online video voicing anti-Israeli views.

PARIS, January 22, 2010 (AFP) - A renegade British Catholic bishop summoned to trial for denying the Holocaust has appeared in an online video voicing anti-Israeli views and acknowledging that he broke a German law on racial hatred.

In the video on the French site Dailymotion, Richard Williamson responds to questions in French, saying: "Lots of people think that Israel is a legitimate state. That does not necessarily mean it is one."

Williamson was last month summoned to face trial on charges of inciting racial hatred for saying in an interview in Germany that "not one Jew" was killed in gas chambers by the Nazis.

The German court said he denied the charges against him and refused to pay the 12,000-euro (18,000-dollar) fine that would enable him to avoid trial. He has kept a low profile since the controversial interview in January 2009.

In the Dailymotion video posted on Thursday he appeared indoors sitting next to a Christmas tree, talking to Pierre Panet, a French anti-Zionist political activist.

He acknowledged that he had "called into question the gassing of six million Jews" and that to do so was a "crime, according to German law."

Williamson belongs to a Swiss-based Catholic fraternity which appointed him a bishop without the pope's blessing after it broke away from Rome over reforms introduced by Vatican II in 1965.

Williamson's comments last year sparked outrage in Germany, where it is illegal to deny the Holocaust.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on Pope Benedict XVI to "clarify unambiguously that there can be no denial" that the Nazis killed six million Jews.

Pope Benedict XVI also drew strong criticism for cancelling the excommunication of Williamson and three other bishops of the ultra-conservative Saint Pius X Society.