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Powell will boycott UN racism conference
( 2001-08-28 13:39 ) ()

US Secretary of State Colin Powell will not attend the UN conference on racism opening in South Africa this week because of language critical of Israel, the State Department said on Monday.

"It is clear to us now that the secretary (Powell) will not go to this conference. The secretary will not attend this conference. The exact nature and level of our representation, if any, is not clear," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told a news briefing.

Boucher said all along, the United States had stated its opposition to several elements of the conference, including "offensive" language about Israel that singles it out as a "racist" occupying power.

It was possible the United States would boycott the conference altogether and not send a delegation at all, Boucher said.

"We'll have to look at the situation, about how this might evolve or change based on the efforts that various people are making, and ... decide on the nature and level of our participation, if any," he said.

Boucher said Powell had spoken on several occasions with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan over the weekend to tell him of his decision about the conference, set to start on Friday.

The United States repeatedly threatened to skip the UN conference unless Arab states drop demands that the conference texts single out Israel.

President George W. Bush said on Friday the United States would not go to the conference in Durban at all if the participants "picked on" or denigrated Israel.

ZIONISM RESOLUTIONS

Boucher said by attending the conference at Cabinet level, the United States would have put out the wrong signal that it agreed with this kind of language describing Israel.

"The level tends to imply a certain association that we may not -- certainly don't want with this kind of language," he said.

Boucher said the United States had spent years trying to "eradicate some of these ideas" about Israel from UN documents and now was not the time to revive them.

The UN General Assembly equated Zionism -- the modern movement promoting the return of Jews to the biblical land of Israel -- with racism in resolutions adopted annually from 1975 to 1991. They were dropped after the landmark 1991 Madrid Middle East peace conference.

The Bush administration had also objected to language in conference documents supporting reparations for slavery but Boucher said the key issue was Israel and not language on reparations.

Asked how he thought other countries would respond to Powell's decision not to attend, Boucher said a variety of other nations shared the same concerns and many were not sending Cabinet-level delegations.

Rep. Tom Lantos, a California Democrat and ranking minority member on the House International Relations Committee, applauded Powell's decision not to go to Durban.

"By allowing a conference against racism to become a conference against Israel, the United Nations -- urged by the Arab states -- has missed an historic opportunity to take a positive step towards eradicating the scourge of racism.

"As a world leader in this fight, the United States must not dignify this anti-Israel lynching with its high-level participation." he said in a statement.