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UN rights chief says anti-racism meet a success
[Al Arabiya Latest] United Nations human rights chief Navi Pillay on Friday pronounced this week's controversial conference against racism a success and denounced a "propaganda machine" for trying to paint it as a failure.As the five-day Durban Review Conference closed here, Pillay stressed that the final declaration of the conference was adopted on Tuesday with the help of concessions made by all regional groups of U.N. member states. "But already the propaganda machine is starting to wind up to term this conference a failure, a hate fest and all the rest of it," the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said. "This is extraordinary. Yet no one has really written up the true story of this Conference -- a strange rough and tumble affair full of smoke and mirrors, I must admit, yet very definitely a success story, with plenty of goodwill as well as plenty of bad will," she told journalists. The declaration was adopted a day after Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday attacked Israel in his speech for its systematic racisist policies and actions against Palestinians. His speech sparked a temporary walkout by delegates of 23 European states while security guards bundled three protestors out of the hall, and completely overshadowed the core issue of rising racism, discrimination and xenophobia. Nine governments, including the United States, Canada, Israel and Germany, boycotted the meeting altogether because of fears of anti-Semitism, while the Czech Republic joined them on Tuesday. Posted by: Fred 2009-04-26 |
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