Japan said Monday it would attend a UN conference on racism and regretted a US boycott of the event, which has been overshadowed by fears of a Western walkout and a verbal onslaught on Israel.
"I regret that the United States cannot participate in the conference," Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura told reporters. "Japan will send our delegation led by Ambassador to Geneva (Shinichi) Kitajima." UN chief Ban Ki-moon was due to open the anti-racism conference in Geneva later Monday amid fears Iran's president would lash out at Israel. (AFP)
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Iran president to address shunned U.N. racism summit
By Laura MacInnis
GENEVA (Reuters) - A United Nations conference on racism shunned by the United States and many of its allies opens Monday when a speech by Iran's president, also regarded with suspicion by the West, will be the focus of attention.
Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Italy are among the countries avoiding the summit on fears it will be a platform for what U.S. President Barack Obama called "hypocritical and counterproductive" antagonism toward Israel.
France will attend the "Durban II" meeting but will walk out if it is used as a platform to attack Israel, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Monday.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the only major head of state who accepted a United Nations invitation to take part in the meeting in Geneva, which U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will also address Monday.
France, like Britain and the Czech Republic, is sending its Geneva ambassadors to the meeting but will not dispatch top officials.
The Iranian leader's speech, coinciding with Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day, could overshadow the summit which the United Nations wants to focus on easing ethnic and racial tensions that threaten migrant workers and minorities.
Ahmadinejad has said Israel should be "wiped off the map" and questioned whether the Nazi Holocaust occurred.
Kouchner, saying its representatives would walk out if there were any open antagonism toward Israel by Ahmadinejad, told France Info radio: "We will not tolerate any excesses, any provocation."
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said the failure of the 27-member European Union to agree a common position on the meeting was a huge disappointment.
"Going there and acting as a silent witness does not pay in the end: you only risk becoming complicit to it," he said in an interview with Italian daily Il Giornale.
The United States and Israel walked out of the last major U.N. race conference in Durban, South Africa, in 2001 after Arab states sought to label Zionism as racist.
U.S. SEEKS 'CLEAN START'
An introductory paragraph "reaffirming" the language of the 2001 meeting declaration, which singled out Israel for scrutiny, proved most controversial in the run-up to the Geneva summit.
U.S. President Barack Obama, speaking at a news conference after the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, said Washington wanted a "clean slate" before tackling race and discrimination issues at the United Nations.
"If we have a clean start, a fresh start, we are happy to go," he said, explaining the U.S. position. "If you're incorporating a previous conference that we weren't involved with (and) that raised a whole set of objectionable provisions, then we couldn't participate."
The U.S. Human Rights Network, an umbrella organization of 300 activist groups, decried Washington's decision to stay away from the summit, three months after Obama became the first African-American U.S. president.
His election "does not close the chapter on racism in the U.S.," it said. "It doesn't end the U.S. obligation to challenge racism globally. On the contrary, the world is looking to the Obama administration to take a leading role in this struggle for racial justice and human rights."
And Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group, said the absence of the U.S. and other Western powers "strikes a blow at U.N. efforts to fight racism."
"Instead of isolating radical voices, governments have capitulated to them," advocacy director Juliette de Rivero said.
(Additional reporting by James Mackenzie in Paris, Gilles Castonguay in Milan, Jan Strupczewski in Brussels and Sue Pleming in Washington; editing by Richard Balmforth)
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President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a meeting with former Turkish Prime Minister, Najmeddin Erbakan, said in Tehran on Sunday, before departing for Geneva, that Islamic states particularly Iran and Turkey should bolster mutual cooperation in order to bring their nations much closer. Touching upon cultural bonds between the two dedicated Muslim peoples, he said by God's grace, the current situation in the world is changing, and the world will finally be administered by pious believers.
Dr. Ahmadinejad praised Erbakan's revolutionary stands on global developments, noting that the measure taken by Erbakan to form the D-8 group of Muslim countries over a decade ago when he was Prime Minister was positive and the organization should be supported by all Islamic states.
He strongly castigated the disgusting role of the Zionists throughout the world, saying: "The Zionists are disbelievers and have no faith in God and religion. They are opposed to prophets and are enemies of humanity."
The Iranian president said the role of Iran and Turkey in building a new world is vital, adding that the Zionists and their masters are afraid of this reality.
He said today the Zionists are disgraced all over the world, among the South Americans, the Africans, the Asians, and even the conscientious citizens of the US.
The former Turkish Premier, for his part, hailed Iran and Turkey as friendly and fraternal nations, stressing that "Iran through its revolutionary and constructive measures seek to salvage the globe."
On Iran's access to peaceful nuclear energy, he said that use of nuclear energy is among Iran's legitimate rights.
http://english.irib.ir/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21301&Itemid=100
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Ahmadinejad prompts walkout from U.N. racism summit
Reuters
Iran's President President Ahmadinejad addresses the High Level segment of the Durban Review Conference on racism at the U.N. European headquarter Reuters – Iran's President President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addresses the High Level segment of the Durban Review …
By Laura MacInnis Laura Macinnis – Mon Apr 20, 2:50 pm ET
GENEVA (Reuters) – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prompted a rare walk-out at the United Nations on Monday when he called Israel a "cruel and repressive racist regime" in his remarks to a conference on race.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon deplored the address which prompted dozens of delegates to leave their seats, further undermining the summit which some Western powers including the United States are boycotting.
"It was a very troubling experience for me as secretary-general," he told a news conference at the day's end. "I have not seen, experienced, this kind of disruptive proceedings of the assembly, the conference, by any one member state. It was a totally unacceptable situation."
Washington announced on Saturday it would sit out the Geneva forum on fears it would be dominated by unfair criticism against Israel. Australia, New Zealand, Italy, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands then followed suit.
Their boycott left Ahmadinejad, who has in the past cast doubt on the Nazi Holocaust, in the spotlight as the only head of state at the conference.
His speech produced exactly the kind of language that they feared, which had also caused Canada and Israel to announce months ago they would stay away.
"Following World War Two they resorted to military aggressions to make an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering," Ahmadinejad told the conference, on the day that Jewish communities commemorate the Holocaust.
"And they sent migrants from Europe, the United States and other parts of the world in order to establish a totally racist government in the occupied Palestine," he said, according to the official translation.
"And in fact, in compensation for the dire consequences of racism in Europe, they helped bring to power the most cruel and repressive racist regime in Palestine."
U.S. CALLS SPEECH "VILE"
Washington decried Ahmadinejad's speech as "vile and hateful," while the Vatican called it "extremist and unacceptable." Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, called the address both "unsavory" and "obnoxious."
"I was shocked and deeply saddened by everything he said," she told journalists. "I don't think, though, that his behavior provided any justification for any other member state to walk out from this conference."
Dozens of diplomats in the audience promptly got up and left the hall for the duration of the speech. While most returned when Ahmadinejad finished speaking, the Czech Republic said its delegation would no longer take part in the conference.
"Such outrageous anti-Semitic remarks should have no place in a U.N. anti-racism forum," said British ambassador Peter Gooderham, whose country chose not to send a minister to Geneva.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store told the plenary after Ahmadinejad's speech that Iran had isolated itself. "Norway will not accept that the odd man out hijacks the collective efforts of the many," he said.
However, a number of the delegations that remained behind applauded Ahmadinejad.
Ban, who had held a meeting with Ahmadinejad before the address, said it was "deeply regrettable" that the Iranian leader had ignored his plea to avoid causing upset.
"I deplore the use of this platform by the Iranian President to accuse, divide and even incite," he said. "We must all turn away from such a message in both form and substance."
Earlier on Monday, Israel recalled its ambassador to Switzerland in protest about the conference and Israeli officials also voiced anger at a meeting that Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz held on Sunday with Ahmadinejad.
Arab and Muslim attempts to single out the Jewish state for criticism had prompted the United States to walk out of the first U.N. summit on racism, in South Africa in 2001.
Although a declaration prepared for the follow-up conference does not refer explicitly to Israel or the Middle East, its first paragraph "reaffirms" a text adopted at the 2001 meeting which includes six paragraphs on those sensitive issues.
(Additional reporting by Robert Evans, Jonathan Lynn and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, James Mackenzie in Paris, Philip Pullella in Rome, and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
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