Jerusalem - Israel's Chief Rabbinate has broken off indefinitely official ties with the Vatican to protest the pope's decision to lift the excommunication on a known Holocaust-denier, the Jerusalem Post daily reported Wednesday.

The Chief Rabbinate also cancelled a meeting scheduled for March 2-4 in Rome with the Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews.

The rabbinate's move follows Pope Benedict XVI's decision last week to lift the excommunication of four bishops, one of whom, British Bishop Richard Williamson, has denied the genocide of 6 million Jews at the hands of the Nazis during World War II.

The Jerusalem Post quoted a letter Chief Rabbinate Director- General Oded Weiner wrote to Cardinal Walter Casper, chairman of the Vatican's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, saying that "without a public apology and recanting, it will be difficult to continue the dialogue."

Rabbi Shear Yishuv Cohen, the chief rabbi of the Israeli city of Haifa and the chairman of the Rabbinate's commission, told The Jerusalem Post that he expected Williamson to publicly retract his statements before meetings could be renewed.

"I understand the Pope's efforts to bring about unity in the Church, but he should be aware that, indirectly, he hurt Jews. We expect him to do the best to repair the situation," he said.

Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication on the four bishops in an attempt to heal a decades-old rift between the Church and a group of ultra-conservative breakaway group of clergymen.

The four were excommunicated 20 years ago, after they were consecrated by the ultra-conservative Archbishop Michel Lefebrve without papal consent.

The Vatican said, in response to protests over Williamson's reinstatement, that the British bishop's views on the Holocaust were "indefensible."

In an interview with Swedish state television, Williamson said "historical evidence is hugely against six million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler."

"I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews died in Nazi concentration camps, but none of them in gas chambers," he said. (dpa)