By The Associated Press and Haaretz Service

Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize winning author and Holocaust survivor, says Iran should be expelled from the United Nations.

“I began a campaign urging for the expulsion of Iran from the United Nations and the declaration of its president as a persona non grata all over the world … because he threatens a member state of destruction,” he said Thursday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” and has dismissed the Holocaust as a myth.

Iran announced April 11 that it had enriched a small quantity of uranium, provoking international concern that it is well on the way to developing an atomic bomb, though the country insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Wiesel was born in Romania and survived the Nazi death camps Auschwitz and Buchenwald during World War II.

He has worked for human rights in many parts of the world and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, and currently teaches at Boston University.