NICHOLAS KOTCH, Durban | Monday
SOUTH African President Thabo Mbeki said on Sunday that aggressive diplomacy by the United States on Israel’s behalf had been counter-productive at a UN racism conference.
He chided those Western European governments who sent low-level delegations to the talks he is hosting in Durban and denied that his view of a world divided between rich whites and poor blacks and ”browns” was excessively bleak.
Speaking in a interview with Reuters, Mbeki said the extent to which the UN World Conference Against Racism had been dominated by the Middle East crisis was largely the result of US threats to boycott the 153-nation gathering.
Bitter arguments over whether Israel is a racist state have eclipsed every other issue, as they did in the preparatory negotiations.
”I think if the United States had said we do not agree with this particular position, let’s meet and discuss it, you would not have had this,” Mbeki said.
”People have been forced to make statements in order to assert which side they are on in this particular debate,” he added.
President George W. Bush sent a low-level delegation to the August 31-September 7 conference and officials warned they would leave unless harshly anti-Israeli language was excised from the draft final declaration.
Mbeki, who took over from president Nelson Mandela in 1999, was also displeased with the junior political representatives sent to the racism conference by some European states.
”There certainly has been that insensitivity which I think is unfortunate. We did communicate our concern to some of the West European governments.
Arguably the main European heavyweight in Durban, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, paid a brief overnight visit.
European officials at the talks deny that their modest participation is linked to calls by some African states and many African-American delegations for reparations for slavery.
European states led by Portugal, Spain and Britain transported at least 11-million African slaves across the Atlantic between the 15th and 19th centuries.
In his speech opening the conference on Friday, Mbeki painted a picture of a world split between the white haves on one side and darker-skinned have-nots on the other.
In the interview he denied this was a portrait of South Africa with limited relevance elsewhere.
He cited recent race riots in Britain, the yawning employment gap between white and black Americans and the mounting concern in Europe about racist extremists.
”I don’t think our statement of this issue exaggerates the importance of the question of racism in the rest of the world.
”There may very well be a situation in which people don’t want to focus on it but I am sure that it will force itself onto their agendas. – Reuters