BRITAIN: The following is an edited version of the statement made by Mayor Ken Livingstone yesterday:
"A week ago I said it was not my intention to apologise to the journalist from the Daily Mail group or his employers. Upon a further week of reflection in which I have read everything written in the press about this controversy, and after considerable debate with many Londoners, I have decided to stand by that position. There will therefore be no apology or expression of regret to the Daily Mail group.
"To the Daily Mail group journalist I say this. You are responsible for your own actions. That you are paid by the Daily Mail group to do the job you do is not a defence for your behaviour. Pursuing me along the pavement thrusting your tape recorder at me whilst repeatedly barking the same question, when I had clearly indicated I did not wish to be interviewed by you, is not acceptable behaviour by you, or any other journalist. If you feel that my comments are too harsh or robust, then you are most probably in the wrong job.
"Whilst this journalistic technique of door-stepping may be appropriate when dealing with people who do not make themselves available to the media, this is not a complaint that can be levelled against myself.
"To the Daily Mail group I say that no-one in Britain is less qualified than they to complain about anti-Semitism. Their papers were not, as some have reported, guilty of "a brief flirtation" with Adolf Hitler in the l930s. In truth, these papers were the leading advocates of anti-Semitism in Britain.
"Whilst it is true the Mail group no longer smears Jews as bringing crime and disease to the UK, it is only because they have moved on.
"After a decade of pandering to racism against our citizens of black and Irish origin, they have moved on and now describe asylum seekers and Muslims in similar terms.
"My main concern has been that many Jewish Londoners have been disturbed by this whipped-up row. I do not equate the actions of one reporter with the total abdication of responsibility shown by those who were complicit to whatever degree in the horrors of the Holocaust. But I do believe that abdicating responsibility for one's actions by the excuse that 'I am only doing my job' is the thin end of the immoral wedge that, at its other extreme, leads to the crimes and horrors of Auschwitz, Rwanda and Bosnia.
I wish to say to those Londoners that my words were not intended to cause such offence, and that my view remains that the Holocaust against the Jews is the greatest racial crime of the 20th century.