Racism Talks Are Stumbling On Language About Israel
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Delegates from more than 100 countries met through the week to draft an
agenda and work on the wording of a final declaration for the racism conference,
which is to open Aug. 31 in Durban, South Africa.
As the contentious meeting closed, a senior State Department official took to
the floor on Friday night to accuse some delegates of taking ''extreme positions
masquerading as flexibility.''
The reference appeared to be to a text offered this week by the 56-country
Organization of Islamic States. This text dropped language that equated Zionism
with racism, an accusation made frequently in the past, but included references
to ''racist practices of the occupying power'' -- Israel -- and ''racial
discrimination against the Palestinians.''
The Bush administration has indicated that it may refuse to take part in the
conference if language singling out Israel is included.
As the talks wound down, the United Nations commissioner for human rights,
Mary Robinson, insisted that a ''real breakthrough against racism, racial
discrimination and related intolerance'' was still possible at Durban, but many
delegates indicated that such accords would be hard to come by given the amount
of unresolved language.
Although the possible withdrawal by the United States shadowed the session,
the mood here was generally positive until the Islamic countries introduced a
seven-page proposal with language that referred, for example, to the ''Jewish
holocaust in Europe.'' Using a lower-case ''h'' to refer to the Holocaust
diminished Jewish suffering under Hitler, Jewish human rights groups insisted.
Representative Tom Lantos, Democrat of California and a member of the
American negotiating team, described the document as ''dripping with hate,'' and
said that without changes, he would recommend that the State Department boycott
the conference.
But a Palestinian delegate, Nabil Ramlawi, said the conference would be a
vehicle ''not to condemn racism, but to protect it'' unless the text referred to
the ''suffering of the Palestinian people due to Israeli racist practices.''
Egypt's delegate, Fayza Aboulnaga, argued that countries could not ''turn a
blind eye to the Palestinian situation, or it will make a mockery of a
conference to combat racism.''
Mrs. Robinson, who is the secretary general of the conference, urged
negotiators to take into account the ''historical wounds of anti-Semitism and of
the Holocaust on the one hand'' and the ''accumulated wounds of displacement and
military occupation on the other.''
Progress was apparently made on another contentious issue, compensation for
the slave trade. African countries agreed to drop language calling for
reparations, which the United States and other Western countries had opposed.
Yet to be settled was whether to press for a ''formal apology'' for slavery,
which Mrs. Robinson said could be construed as laying the legal groundwork for
compensation, and whether slavery would be defined as a crime against humanity.
With so much unsettled, Mrs. Robinson said negotiations would most likely
resume when delegates meet in Durban. But Israel's delegate, Yaakov Levy, said
his country would have to consider whether to take part in Durban, and the State
Department is expected to announce in the coming week whether it will attend.
But the efforts foundered over the insistence by Islamic and Arab
countries that the conference text include wording accusing Israel of racist
practices against Palestinians.
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