Concerns are high that this week’s UN anti-racism conference may descend into heated debate over Israel that marred the last such gathering eight years ago.
Already, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — whose comments have often been interpreted as calling for the destruction of Israel and denied the Holocaust — plans to speak tomorrow as the conference opens.
The US and the EU had not decided on Friday whether to attend the meeting or boycott it over Islamic countries’ demands to condemn Israel and call for a ban on defaming religion.
Israel and Canada have said they won’t attend over concerns about a possible repeat of verbal attacks on the Jewish state.
“We have made clear ... that we cannot tolerate it if this anti-racism conference is turned into an accusatory event, a one-sided event against the state of Israel,” said Thomas Steg, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Many Muslim countries want curbs to free speech to prevent insults to Islam they say have proliferated since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the US. Riots erupted across the Muslim world after a Danish newspaper published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2005.
The five-day meeting in Geneva is designed to review progress in fighting racism since the UN’s first such conference eight years ago in South Africa.
That meeting, which ended four days before 9/11, was dominated by quarrels over the Middle East and the legacy of slavery. The US and Israel walked out midway through the conference over a draft resolution that singled out Israel for criticism and likened Zionism — the movement to establish a Jewish state in the Holy Land — to racism.
Those references were removed from the final declaration, though it did cite “the plight of the Palestinians” as an issue.
Many of the 2001 issues — such as criticism of Israel — now are re-emerging.
Direct references to Israel and to defamation of religion have been dropped from the draft document for this year’s conference, but there is pressure from Muslim countries to reinsert them.
Some sticking points remained Friday that could unravel the conference, such as Iran’s objection to a paragraph stating that the Holocaust must never be forgotten.
The US has said it remains concerned about “restrictions on freedom of expression that could result from some of the document’s language related to ‘incitement’ to religious hatred.”
“There are still issues which remain and these are being discussed,” UN spokesman Ramu Damodaran said.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the head of the Organization of The Islamic Conference, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, will take part in the meeting’s opening. Officials from 103 states have confirmed their participation, the UN said.
Jewish and Muslim lobby groups, as well as human rights groups, are prepared to turn out en masse.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home