DURBAN--The United States
and Israel withdrew from UN World Conference
Against Racism (WCAR) Monday hours after Israel
denounced the draft text as "the most racist" international
declaration in more than half a century.
In a statement released
at the press center in the International Conference
Center (ICC)
U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell said that "with
regret" he had instructed the American delegation
to return home.
He said he had
concluded that a conference condoning "hateful
language", that "singles out Israel for
abuse" could not be successful.
The Israeli announcement was made in Jerusalem,
simultaneously with the American statement.
Minutes earlier, Steven Wagenseil and Howard T.
Perlow of the U.S. State department were the first
to break the news in Durban, telling a caucus of
North American Indigenous people that the entire
delegation was going home.
Perlow told the indigenous group in the NGO lounge
above room 3 in the ICC exhibition hall, in effect,
that it would be pointless to discuss the proposed
text on indigenous people's rights, as the Americans
would not be able to vote on any text.
It was the draft
text, with its repeated references to Israel
that annoyed the Americans, who lay claim
to a "special relationship" with Israel.
President George W. Bush said at his ranch last
month that the U.S. Might not participate in a
meeting that would be seen as "picking on
Israel."
The state department sent a low-level team, which
worked quietly in committee meetings to change
the text of the draft final declarations.
In the first reaction
to the American decision, released in fact before
the official paper from
the U.S. delegation, the South African Ministry
of Foreign Affairs said "It will be unfortunate
if a perception were to develop that the USA's
withdrawal from the conference is merely a red-herring
demonstrating an unwillingness to confront the
real issues posed by racism in the USA and globally."
Hours before the
American announcement, Mordechai Yedid, the head
of the Israeli delegation asked
at the plenary meeting in the International Conference
Center: "Can there be a greater irony than
the fact that a conference convened to combat the
scourge of racism should give rise to the most
racist declaration in a major international organization
since the Second World War?"
Yedid, who delivered
a text written by Israel's deputy foreign minister,
Rabbi Michael Melchior,
condemned draft texts that label Zionism as racist,
as an "obscenity." He said Melchior didn't
attend "because of the negative developments
which appear to be materializing" at the conference.
Delegates to the s Nongovernmental Organization
(NGO) forum which ended Saturday voted to label
Israel as a racist state, and several Jewish and
Israeli meetings here have been disrupted by pro-Palestinian
demonstrators shouting accusations at Israel.
After Yedid's speech,
which was received by a loud round of applause
in the NGO area of the plenary
hall, Israeli ambassador to South Africa Tova Herzl
told Conference News Daily: "There is no way
we are going to give our hand to a conference that
singles out Israel, one nation, of all the rest."
"Reasonable people from reasonable countries
are not going to give their hands to a conference
that has turned into a farce," she said.
Asked if that meant
the delegation would walk out immediately, she
said, " The conference
is about half way. We will see. We certainly are
not going to wait until Friday."
Yedid, in his remarks before a half-empty plenary
chamber lashed out at Arab states, who he blamed
for much of the draft text.
"Did anyone
of those Arab states which conceived this obscenity
stop for one moment to consider
their own record? Or to think for that matter of
the situation of the Jews and other minorities
in their own countries?"
"A group of
states for whom the terms 'racism,' 'discrimination,'
and even 'human rights' simply
do not appear in their domestic lexicon, have hijacked
this conference."
Yedid said that
Palestinian Authority President Yaser Arafat,
who labeled Israel a racist state
in the plenary last week, "chose this podium
to incite bitterness and hatred."
"The venal hatred of Jews that has taken
the form of anti-Zionism and which has surfaced
at this conference, is . different in one crucial
way from the anti-Semitism of the past, " he
said. "Today it is being deliberately propagated
and manipulated for political ends"
Although he said "the conflict between us
and our Palestinian neighbors is not racial and "has
no place at this conference, " and "the
outrageous and manic accusations we have heard
here are attempts to turn a political issue into
a racial one, Yedid presented a brief defense of
Israel 's political and military stance in the
Palestinian territories, saying Palestinian attacks
on Israeli civilians were "forcing Israel
to assume a role which we abhor, defending our
citizens."
Yedid, in the actual
delivery of the speech, eliminated some of the
harsher adjectives that appeared in
the written version. In an interview with Conference
News Daily, he said the dropping of the words "obscenity" and "manic" from
the delivery was done only to save time.
"Put the adjectives in, just as they are
written in the text," he said, "Put them
all in."
After the speech
Yedid posed with Chaim Avraham who identified
himself as the father of an Israeli
soldier kidnapped on the Lebanese border. Avraham
shouted that the meeting was a "farce" and
the United Nations was facilitating "another
holocaust."
Ambassador Toufiq Ali of Bangladesh told the plenary
the occupation of Palestinian land meant that the
Palestinian people were victims of racism.
Walter Schwimmer,
the secretary general of the Council of Europe
condemned the "intimidation" of
speakers in the NGO meeting "simply for being
Jews." "I also regret the distribution
of anti-Semitic propaganda during the conference,'
he said.
Pro-Palestinian groups have distributed editorial
cartoons with grossly distorted caricatures of
Jews, with swastikas around them.
The U.S. delegation fanned out among the drafting
sub committees, attempting to change the text to
be less forceful and specific against Israel, and
to conform to the administration's foreign policy
goals. Among other items the United States objected
to was language strengthening the International
Criminal court. The United States is fighting the
court as it is currently envisioned.
Unlike in previous conferences, the U.S. delegation
in Durban did not give news briefings or off the
record background briefings to journalists, and
has generally kept a low profile.
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