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NEWS
U.S. and Israel quit Durban Conference
by Yated Ne'eman Staff

The U.S. and Israel dramatically announced simultaneously in Washington and Jerusalem Monday night that they would be leaving the UN conference against racism currently taking place in Durban, South Africa. There were rumors that Canada would also leave but meanwhile it has decided to stay.

The decision comes after frustration over the way the entire conference was subverted by the narrow hatred of Arab opportunists desiring to denounce Israel and not deal with the real issues of world racism, and the specific failure of the U.S. and Israel to water down the viciously anti-Israel language of the resolutions proposed to summarize the work of the conference.

"Today, I have instructed our representatives at the world conference to return home," U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a statement, which was issued simultaneously in Washington and Durban, where the conference was in its fourth day.

"I have taken this decision with regret because of the importance of the international fight against racism and the contribution that this conference could have made to it," he said. "But following discussions today by our team in Durban and others who are working for a successful conference, and others, I am convinced that it will not be possible."

In Jerusalem, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres announced Israel's decision to leave, explaining that there is no chance to change the "ugly and insulting decision" drafted by the conference.

"We have instructed our delegation in Durban to come back home," Peres said at a news conference timed to coincide with the U.S. announcement. "We regret very much the very bizarre show in Durban. An important convention that's supposed to defend human rights became a source of hatred. . . . We don't feel defeated. We feel peace was defeated. We don't feel as though Israel was accused. I think the accusers are the ones to be blamed.

"The Durban conference is a farce," he said.

He expressed gratitude to the 43 states that opposed the "one- sided decision" of the Arab and Muslim leagues.

"These countries saved world respect from deteriorating to the low level of lies and incitement," Peres said, adding that he had hoped that the "truth would prevail over the hatred."

The decision to bolt the conference apparently came after Egypt, Syria and Iran indicated that they would reject a Norwegian bridging proposal that would have adopted a generic anti-racism resolution, without singling out any country by name.

According to Shimon Samuels, head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Paris office and head of the Jewish caucus in Durban, the Egyptians insisted in a negotiating session with the Norwegians that Israel be termed a racist state; the Syrians repeated Holocaust-denial statements; and the Iranians declared that antisemitism was not a form of contemporary racism that should be dealt with at the conference.

After that, Samuels said, it became clear that there would be no chance to water down the resolutions.

Alan Baker, the Israel Foreign Ministry's legal advisor and deputy head of Israel's mission in Durban, told a throng of journalists at the conference last night that "no rational argument has carried any weight with the Arab countries and the Palestinians determined to attack us."

Baker said that not only has Israel been "uniquely singled out, but that totally false accusations and lies unrelated to the purpose of the conference have been flung at us."

Saying that the conferences has been "hijacked," Baker said, "We have been forced to the conclusion that there is no purpose in our being here."

Baker said that "Israel deeply regrets that the noble aims of the conference have been perverted."

Israel and American sources said that an "alternative to the Durban conference," where leading intellectuals and leaders will voice support of Israel, is being planned, and is likely to take place in Jerusalem in the next few weeks.

Diplomats had desperately tried to find middle ground between Israel and the U.S., both of which objected strongly to the draft declarations, and Arab and Muslim states, which wanted Israeli actions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip condemned.

"It seems that despite extraordinary efforts by the American government reaching back many months, it will prove impossible for the American delegation to continue participating at this conference," Congressman Tom Lantos, a U.S. delegate, said.

"Those who have made it their goal to hijack the conference for their propaganda purposes apparently have shown in the course of the day a degree of rigidity and unwillingness to compromise," he told reporters.

Mordechai Yedid, Israel's representative to the conference, said that Israel would only be satisfied if the conference ended with no condemnation of Israel, no signaling it out among all the nations of the world, and no hate language.

"Racism, in all its forms, is one of the most widespread and pernicious evils, depriving millions of hope and fundamental rights," Yedid read in an unemotional manner from a text originally written for another Israeli delegate who did not attend because of the way things were going. "It may have been hoped that this first conference of the 21st century would have taken up the challenge of, if not eradicating racism, at least disarming it. But instead humanity is being sacrificed to a political agenda."

He said that barely a decade after the UN repealed the Zionism- is-racism resolution, "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 and plunged us to even greater depths. 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 World War II?

"I fear, deeply, for the victims of racism," he said, "for the slaves, the disenfranchised, the oppressed, the inexplicably hated, the impoverished, the despised, the millions who turn their eyes to this hall in the frail hope that it may address their suffering, who see instead that a blind and venal hatred of the Jews has turned their hopes into a farce. For them I fear."

 

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