World News 04-09-2001 US And Israel Quit World Racism Conference who: General Colin Powell what: Tells Racism Conference delegates to come home where: Durban, South Africa when: Yesterday snippet: "The United States pulled out of the UN racism conference yesterday," reports The Independent, "saying it was angry at attempts by delegates to single out Israel as a racist state." The walkout was provoked by a statement from the Egyptian delegation which demanded that Israel must be condemned as racist, says Michael Dynes in The Times, as well as a statement from Syria saying that the Holocaust "was a Jewish lie" and "a demand from Iran that anti-Semitism should not be accepted as discrimination because it was not a contemporary form of racism." The Americans and Israelis described the UN Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban of being a "cesspool of racism", says The Guardian, while their South African hosts retorted by delicately suggesting that president George W Bush is "not an anti-racist". The Telegraph describes the "hateful conference" as being rife with "hypocritical cant" and argues that the British delegation should follow the Americans, concluding that "racism is an evil but the Durban conference is an insane way to confront it." [... more]

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