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Fate of racism conference hangs in the air

South Africa looked yesterday for a compromise that could save a UN conference on racism from failure after the US and Israel pulled out.

Both withdrew late Monday in protest at language in conference drafts that branded Israel as racist for its treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories.

South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma told the South African Broadcasting Corporation that a conference required "compromise" and that she was not surprised by the move.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said in a statement issued in Durban that: "I have instructed our representatives at the world conference to return home."

Powell assailed any attempt to single out "only one country in the world, Israel, for censure and abuse" and suggestions that apartheid existed in Israel.

But the singling out of Israel for condemnation is also unacceptable to the EU and even if the Europeans did not follow Washington in abandoning Durban there is no chance any conference declaration could be approved in its current form, diplomats said.

"There is really very little difference between our view and the United States when it comes to the wording on Israel," one European diplomat said.

Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, whose country holds the rotating presidency, told a news conference on Monday night the 15-state bloc had agreed to take part in the drafting of a "completely new text" on the Middle East.

The drafting session began late Monday and was due to run through the night, an EU spokesman said.

"But that does not mean that we are necessarily going to have anything approaching an agreed text on Tuesday," he added. "There are still four days to go before the conference ends."

The World Conference on Racism, which organizers hoped would be a landmark in the international struggle against racism, runs from Aug. 31 to Sept. 7.

But from its outset it has been mired in rows over how to deal with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Over 700 people, most of them Palestinians, have died in violence that followed the collapse of the peace process 11 months ago.

"It is becoming clear that this focus on the Middle East is diverting attention away from a range of issues of importance to others at the Durban conference," said the Business Day newspaper in an editorial yesterday.

There is also no accord in sight on African demands that former slave states make an apology for some 400 years of human trafficking up to the early 19th century during which some 12 million people where shipped to the Americas.

South Africa, proud of its own transition from apartheid to a multi-racial society, said the US withdrawal from the meeting was "unfortunate and unnecessary."

"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," Essop Pahad, South African minister of the presidency, said in a statement.

UN rights chief Mary Robinson said she regretted Washington's decision and warned that if the conference failed to come to an agreement it would give comfort to the worst elements of society.

The conference aims to agree on two documents -- one a declaration of principles and the other a detailed program of action that each state would undertake to carry out to combat racism.

The EU spokesman said the South Africans would take as their starting point in their search for a compromise over the Middle East a proposal put forward by Norway but which had previously been rejected by Islamic states.

"This conference should have worked on common ground to beat racism throughout the world. Instead it has been hijacked in the most disgraceful and outrageous way," said Lord Janner, vice-president of the World Jewish Congress.

Fundamentalist Islamic groups in Asia wasted no time in condemning Israel and the US for walking out of the conference

Ameerul Azeem, a spokesman for Pakistan's right-wing religious group, the Islamic Party, said: "It is shameful that America, which champions ... human rights, is ignoring the killings of innocent Palestinians.''

Another Pakistani group, the Movement for Shiite Muslim Law, accused the US of double standards and hypocrisy.

"The American lip-service to human-rights causes, democracy and justice is a sham," said Zulfikar Haider, the movement's information secretary.
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