Livingstone remains defiant

Ken Livingstone today admitted his "German war criminal" jibe to a Jewish reporter was offensive but again refused to apologise.

The Mayor remained defiant in the face of the growing row over his commentsto Evening Standard reporter Oliver Finegold in which he compared him to "a concentration camp guard".

While denying the remarks were racist, Mr Livingstone did concede they may be regarded as hurtful by many people, including Holocaust survivors and the wider Jewish community which has reacted with fury to his outburst made outside a City Hall reception.

He said: "You can make the case my remarks to that reporter were offensive. You can make the case that they may be actionable and they may have recourse in law. But you can't make the case they were racist. It may well be very offensive. These are matters of personal judgment. But what it was not is racist."

Mr Livingstone faced a barrage of questions from reporters attending his weekly press conference, which had been scheduled to deal with transport matters.

He was repeatedly asked whether he would be apologising to the Jewish community for what they widely regard as comments which belittled the horrors of the Holocaust.

Mr Livingstone's outburst came as Finegold asked him for a comment as he left a party to mark the 20th anniversary of Chris Smith coming out as the country's first gay MP last week.

Today Mr Livingstone refused to back down, saying: "I'm not going to apologise if I don't believe it. I don't believe I've done anything wrong."

Instead the Mayor repeated his attack on the Evening Standard.

He also indulged in a personal attack on the Evening Standard's editor Veronica Wadley, the editor of our sister paper the Daily Mail, Paul Dacre, and the Rothermere family who are proprietors of both papers. Mr Livingstone denied the ongoing row would damage London's chances of being awarded the 2012 Olympics, despite the arrival in the capital today of a delegation from the International Olympic Committee to hear the city's case for staging the Games.

He said he thought the delegates would be impressed if they thought that London's Mayor did not cut and run at the first sign of political controversy. "It won't damage the Olympics," he said. "It's important that IOC membersrealise that some of the media will go for them (the Games) and the Mayor is not going to panic and change course, but will deliver the Games to them."

Mr Livingstone said that not even a letter from Tony Blair urging him to apologise for his comments would change his mind.

London Assembly Tory group leader Bob Neill has written to the Prime Minister urging him to censure the Mayor.

But Mr Livingstone said: "Tony Blair has made his position clear. It's my job to do my job. He is not there to manage me and he's not answerable to my mistakes."

Labour colleagues on the London Assembly yesterday backed a motion, passed unanimously, calling for Mr Livingstone to withdraw his remarks.

An official complaint has been made to local government watchdogs by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, demanding an investigation by the Standards Board of England.