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UN Conference In Balance Over Equating Zionism With Racism
GENEVA, 30 July (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The success of September's United Nations conference on racism was hanging in the balance in Geneva Monday, as delegates from across the world sit down in a final attempt to consider including the contentious issue of equating Zionism with racism in Durban's final declaration.
Delegates have been given a special preparatory session to agree an agenda for the Durban meeting after their previous efforts ended in deadlock over Zionism and slavery.
According to the BBC online service, the Asian Group of nations said the Zionism measure should be included in Durban's final declaration at the end of the U.N. World Racism Conference in South Africa.
It said that Israel's treatment of Palestinians is racist, and that there are many holocausts not just one, so Israel should not insist on the word having a capital letter.
Earlier, the White House announced the United States would shun the U.N. conference on racism if the agenda included a measure equating Zionism with racism.
President George W. Bush "is sending a signal: the conference should not equate Zionism with racism" or take up the reparations matter, said his spokesman, Ari Fleischer. "And if they do, the United States will not go."
Organizers "risk turning what could be a productive conference to combat racism into a conference of Third World nations that take positions that are far out of synch with the American mainstream," he claimed.
Washington did not attend two previous U.N. racism conferences in 1978 and 1983 because of the Zionism issue.
"If they don't come, people will read into it that they don't see the issues as important," said Sipho Pityana, director-general of South Africa's foreign affairs department.
U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson, meanwhile, urged humility and said the emphasis should be on the future rather than the past.
"Civil society will be taking the opportunity in Durban to remind every country that it has problems", she said.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has joined efforts to keep a planned U.N. conference on racism from being "derailed by very disruptive political issues," the United Nations said Friday.
U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said Friday Annan is supporting efforts by U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson to make the conference succeed.
Eckhard said Robinson stated Friday that she had made an appeal to that regard to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, adding that he had "understood her concerns and he, too, wanted to see the conference succeed."
The host, South Africa, is concerned that an absence of the U.S. in Durban would seriously undermine any agreements which may be reached, BBC online reported.
Issues surrounding the Arab-Israeli conflict, plus African demands for reparations to be paid by countries that benefited from the slave trade and colonialism, have proved divisive.
The dispute over Zionism goes back to a 1975 U.N. resolution equating it with racism. The resolution was repealed 10 years ago, but some Arab organizations proposed similar language for the conference's draft declaration.
Delegates will spend 10 days in Geneva, but they share little common ground.
The eight-day World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance is scheduled to start August 31 and will attract about 30 to 35 heads of state, approximately 160 foreign ministers, delegations from 194 countries and 1,800 South African and United Nations support staff.
The conference will focus on action-oriented and practical steps to eradicate racism, including measures of prevention, education and protection and the provision of effective remedies.
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