Racism debate divides summit
Published 9:00 pm Sunday, September 2, 2001
The Washington Post and the new york times
DURBAN, South Africa —U.S. and Israeli governments said Sunday night they might walk out of the United Nations conference against racism here if what it called "hatred" language against Israel, proposed by the Palestinian delegation and its allies, is not removed from final documents of the conference.
"The Durban conference is part of a Palestinian political offensive aimed at tarnishing Israel and the image of the Jewish people," Mordecai Hadid, head of the Israeli delegation, told a news conference.
An American delegate, U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., said the United States was also considering abandoning the conference. Lantos said he had met with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, with foreign ministers and with dozens of delegates, but that little progress was being made.
Lantos said his team was working hard to resolve the dispute. But Sunday, he said, when he spoke to Secretary of State Colin Powell by telephone, he advised him that the United States should withdraw if the talks remain deadlocked.
Hadid said his government had tried and failed to remove language in the proposed conference documents that equates Zionism with racism, singles out Israel for criticism in its treatment of Palestinians under Israeli occupation, and tries to "trivialize" the Nazi Holocaust. Zionism is the political movement that led to the foundation of the Jewish state.
The World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, which opened Friday and will continue for a week, has been dominated by Middle East politics. With emotions heightened by daily violence in Israel and the West Bank, many delegates feel attention is being distracted from the conference’s mandate to combat discrimination globally.
On the conference floor, numerous Arab heads of government have denounced Israel as a repressive and racist state, and Arafat has delivered two speeches on successive days railing against Israeli occupation, colonialism and repression.
The draft final documents still contain language that condemns Israel repeatedly in harsh terms, comparing it with the former apartheid system of white rule in South Africa and accusing it of genocide. The documents call for an international war crimes tribunal and other international bodies to be set up to investigate, monitor and judge Israel’s behavior.
