Washington Post - 08.28.2001

 

Washington Post

Powell Will Not Attend Racism Conference in South Africa

By Jane Perlez

ASHINGTON — Secretary of State Colin L. Powell will not attend a United Nations conference on racism and it is possible that the United States will boycott the gathering, which opens Friday in South Africa, his spokesman said today.

The decision on what kind, if any, of a delegation the Bush administration would send to the eight-day conference will depend on whether language in the meeting's agenda criticizing Israel is changed in the coming days, said the spokesman, Richard L. Boucher.

General Powell, the first African- American to become secretary of state, had said soon after coming to office that he would like to go to the conference. His aides made clear over many months that he discussed the conference with visiting foreign ministers and tried to work with the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, to persuade governments to omit contentious issues from the agenda.

Some Jewish groups were strongly opposed to Secretary Powell's attending the conference, while others were more open to the idea, sending representatives to the preparatory sessions to try to eliminate the anti- Israel language.

Secretary Powell's presence at the conference became a matter of a charged debate within the administration during recent months. After President Bush said on Friday that the United States would "not participate" in the conference so long as delegates "pick on Israel" it became clearer that Secretary Powell would not be going.

Mr. Boucher said today that the most critical issue for the United States was "a whole series of references to one particular government, to one particular country, and to its policies as being racist."

The secretary's decision, first reported in The Los Angeles Times, drew mixed reactions. Among the critics was the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

"Mr. Bush made a fateful step for isolation by disallowing Secretary of State Powell to lead the delegation to the conference against global racism in South Africa," Mr. Jackson said in an interview. The United States was "abdicating responsibility" and was losing an opportunity to show the rest of the world what progress had been made in outlawing racism at home, he said.

Support for the administration's position came from the executive director of the American Jewish Committee, David Harris, who noted that little progress had been made in amending the offensive language being insisted on by "an intransigent Arab position."

"If the United States does not go, nobody in the Jewish community will shed a tear," he said.

Mr. Harris said he was invited by the White House last Thursday to join an official United States delegation to the conference. The invitation was issued with the proviso that either Secretary Powell or the assistant secretary for human rights, Lorne Craner, would head it, he said.

The Anti-Defamation League applauded the decision, saying, "Secretary Powell's presence in Durban would only confer legitimacy on the anti-Semitic rhetoric that threatens to derail an otherwise laudable effort to fight global racism."

As the secretary weighed the merits of attending the conference, his aides portrayed the decision as a more personal one for him than for his predecessors. That the conference was being held in South Africa, after apartheid, also had resonance.

But in recent weeks, State Department officials said, it had become unclear what the secretary could accomplish by attending. They portrayed Arab countries as being insistent on the anti-Israel language, which they noted had emerged from a meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference held in Iran.

The administration is considering sitting out another United Nations conference next month, also over concerns about language. State Department officials said tonight that the administration might not send a high-level delegation to a United Nations General Assembly session on children beginning Sept. 19.

A department official declined to comment on specific qualms about the document, which is to be the product of a three-day meeting involving 75 heads of state and government, and aims to address issues affecting children like education, disease and war. The Tuesday edition of The Washington Post first reported the administration's concerns.