Mideast rhetoric dominates race talks

Published 9:00 pm Friday, August 31, 2001

Associated Press

DURBAN, South Africa — The Middle East dominated the opening of the world conference against racism Friday as Yasser Arafat accused Israel of "racist practices" against the Palestinian people.

The Palestinian leader’s sharp rhetoric undercut a campaign by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who said he had urged Arafat shortly beforehand to drop his support for a summit declaration that would attack Israel as a racist state and equate Zionism, the movement that founded Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people, with racism.

The World Conference Against Racism, taking place in the coastal city of Durban, has been plagued by controversy over efforts to condemn Israel and demands for reparations for slavery and colonialism.

The United States, Canada and Israel refused to send high-level delegations because of proposed wording in the conference’s draft final document they considered anti-Semitic or anti-Israel.

In Washington, Bush administration officials said Friday that American diplomats will quit the conference if anti-Israel provisions remain in its final declaration.

In his opening address, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan asked the delegates to look past their individual disputes and work together to develop an international plan to combat prejudice.

"Let us admit that all countries have issues of racism and discrimination to address," he said.

Annan said he recognized the suffering of Jews during the Holocaust, and the added pain of being accused of racism, especially when innocent civilians were being killed in Israel.

"Yet we cannot expect Palestinians to accept this as a reason why the wrongs done to them — displacement, occupation, blockade and now extra-judicial killings — should be ignored, whatever label one uses to describe them," Annan said to a wave of applause.

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