United Nations Secretary-General Mr Kofi Annan has been strongly critical of Israel in his speech during the opening of a UN conference on racism in South Africa.
|
Mr Annan said Israel could not use the ultimate abomination of the Holocaust as an excuse never to examine its own behaviour.
"We cannot expect Palestinians to accept this [the Holocaust] as a reason why the wrongs done to them - displacement, occupation, blockage, and now extra-judicial killings - should be ignored, whatever label one uses to describe them," he said.
Arab states have insisted the conference text contain a specific reference to what they say is Israel's racist treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories.
The United States and Canada previously announced they downgraded their delegations because of what they saw as anti-Israeli language in the draft declaration.
The draft does not equate Zionism with racism but it says: "Foreign occupation founded on settlements . . . [is] a new kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity".
Israel said today it had decided not to boycott the conference but would send a low-level delegation instead of Deputy Foreign Minister Mr Michael Melchior.
The conference opened with the host, South African President Mr Thabo Mbeki, painting a bleak picture of a world split between rich whites and poor blacks.
"It became necessary that we convene . . . because, together, we recognised the fact there are many in our common world who suffer indignity and humiliation because they are not white," Mr Mbeki said.
"Their cultures and traditions are despised as savage and primitive and their identities denied. They are not white and are deeply immersed in poverty. Of them it is said that they are human but black, whereas others are described as human and white," Mr Mbeki said.