PARIS (AFP) - French President Jacques Chirac has ordered a probe into revisionist comments made by the French scholar Robert Faurisson at an Iranian conference on the Holocaust this week, his office said Friday.

Chirac has asked Justice Minister Pascal Clement to open a preliminary investigation into the comments made by Faurisson, a retired professor well-known for his revisionist views.

The 77-year-old Faurisson was given a three-month suspended jail term for Holocaust denial in October over remarks he made on Iranian television.

Iran this week organized a conference on the Holocaust that presented Nazi Germany's systematic slaughter of six million Jews during World War II as a matter of historical debate, sparking angry condemnation from around the world.