Ilan Elgar, Israel's ambassador to Switzerland, has likened the recent meeting between the Swiss and Iranian presidents to the appeasement of Hitler during the 1930s. Speaking to the newspaper ‘NZZ am Sonntag’, Elgar said it was not possible to "chasten a dangerous government" by "making concessions". Elgar noted that Swiss-Israeli relations had reached an all-time low. He added that the strong Israeli reaction to Swiss president Hans-Rudolf Merz's recent meeting with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in part due to the fact that the encounter coincided with the start of Israel's annual Holocaust Remembrance Day commemorations.
Merz and Ahmadinejad met in Geneva to discuss bilateral ties, ahead of the United Nations racism conference where the Iranian president gave a controversial speech the following day. Elgar was ordered home for "consultations" on 20 April as a result. He told the newspaper this was the first instance of Israel recalling an ambassador from a European country since 1986, when it reacted to the election of Kurt Waldheim, an intelligence officer in the Nazi army, as president of Austria.
Last year, Swiss foreign minister Calmy-Rey caused a storm when she flew to Tehran to sign a gas deal for a Swiss company with Iran.
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