The first United Nations General Assembly special session on HIV/AIDS was plunged into disarray today by a filibuster by Muslim states over the participation of a gay and lesbian movement.
A motion to allow Ms Karyn Kaplan, of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, to take part in a round-table on human rights was adopted by 62 votes to none after two and a half hours of debate.
However, in a clear challenge to the Assembly president, Mr Harri Holkeri of Finland, a total of 30 countries abstained from the vote, many having said they would disassociate themselves from the process.
Russia, China and several African nations sided with the Islamic group in abstaining.
"We have been on a road that will make working the UN more difficult than it is," South Africa's ambassador to the UN, Mr Dumisani Kumalo, told delegates after the vote.
"This is a conference about people who are dying from HIV/AIDS," he said.
"The people who are dying are white people, black people, gay people, non-gay people, all people," he added.
"As victims of past discrimination in our country, we are very sensitive when people are being discriminated against, but this is not about discrimination," Mr Kumalo said: "This about people who are dying of HIV/AIDS."
He appealed to each side not to question the other's motives.
Those who chose not to participate in the vote, like those who had voted, "are very good members of the United Nations," he said to loud applause.
The vote was called after repeated maneuverings by Islamic states to block a Canadian proposal to reinstate Ms Kaplan's name on a list of round-table speakers.
Mr Holkeri recommended last week that Ms Kaplan be allowed to join government delegates and others at tomorrow’s round-table, one of four scheduled for the three-day session.
But Ms Kaplan, one of 700 non-government organization representatives accredited to the special session, was anonymously blackballed by 11 countries.
In two and a half hours of procedural wranglings, not a single speaker explained Ms why Kaplan should be barred from the round-table, although Pakistan, for example, said more than once that it was acting on principle.
Delegates from Egypt, Malaysia, Pakistan and Sudan repeatedly questioned the quorum of the Assembly and challenged Mr Holkeri's rulings, some in terms that bordered on insolence.
At one point, a clearly exasperated Mr Holkeri slammed down his gavel to silence a Pakistani diplomat who said the debate "should be ruled by the Assembly's rules of procedure, not by your rulings".
Raising a point of order for the fourth time, a Malaysian speaker told Mr Holkeri "this is obviously a futile exercise" since, she said, he had given no previous reply.
A Libyan representative corrected Mr Holkeri when the president referred to his country as the Libyan Republic, rather than the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.
The Iraqi ambassador to the UN, Mohammed el-Douri, asked for the floor to explain that, although his country has lost its vote in the General Assembly, if it were able to vote, it would have abstained.
AFP