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A hateful conference

THE United Nations had it coming to it. Last month, Colin Powell, the black American Secretary of State, decided to send only low-level representation to Durban for its World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.

The reason for his decision was the gathering's manifest purpose: a ganging-up against the West and Israel in the form of demands for an apology and reparations for slavery and colonialism, and an indictment of Israel as one of the leading practitioners of racism and ethnic cleansing. Since the meeting began on Friday, Mr Powell's worst fears can only have been confirmed. Yesterday, he announced that the United States was pulling out of Durban after failing to remove "hateful" anti-Israeli language from the conference documents. Israel, which also sent a junior delegation, has followed suit.

Mr Powell's view of the meeting is worth quoting at some length: " I know that you do not combat racism by a conference that produces declarations containing hateful language, some of which is a throwback to the days of 'Zionism equals racism', or supports the idea that we have made too much of the Holocaust or suggests that apartheid exists in Israel or that singles out only one country in the world, Israel, for censure and abuse."

This wretched conference is attempting to set the clock back to before 1991, when the UN General Assembly's resolution on Zionism and racism was repealed. It is putting in the dock Western nations which gave to the world the notion that racism and xenophobia are wrong. That is not to say that they are free of such ills. But it is pretty rich to be publicly pilloried at what purports to be an anti-racism conference by the likes of anti-Semitic Syria and a Zimbabwean regime that seeks to blame all its ills on the white minority and Britain, the old colonial power. The UN thoroughly deserves the disgust it has inspired in Washington and has only itself to blame if it now makes no headway in persuading the Americans to pay their $2.3 billion arrears to its funds.

The British Government, which has rightly resisted demands to apologise for the transatlantic slave trade, is nevertheless staying in Durban to the end. Tomorrow, Angela Eagle, a Home Office minister, will take over the baton from Baroness Amos, her Foreign Office equivalent, who left yesterday. After the hypocritical cant it has had to endure over the past four days, there is no good reason why Britain should stay. Tony Blair should brush aside the wish of Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, to maintain representation at all costs, and pull our delegation out. Racism is an evil but the Durban conference is an insane way to confront it.

-- Anonymous, September 03, 2001