Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres will decide Monday morning whether to recall the Israeli delegation to the UN conference against racism currently being held in Durban, South Africa.
According to Haaretz, the decision will be made after it is clearer whether there is a chance for a compromise formulation of the summit's closing statement that does not include anti-Israel wording.
In internal talks, Peres supported returning the delegation to Israel, and expressed harsh criticism of the conference.
The New York Times, meanwhile, reported that Israeli and American officials warned Saturday that they might walk out, saying that diplomatic efforts aimed at eliminating criticism of Israel from conference documents seemed to be bearing little fruit.
The officials accused Palestinian and Arab delegations of using the conference as a platform to "smear" Israel.
The remarks by the Americans and Israelis came after a coalition of rights groups meeting here separately presented a report that attacked Israel as an "apartheid regime" that had committed "racist crimes against humanity, including ethnic cleansing and acts of genocide" in its treatment of Palestinians.
The rights groups submitted the report to the United Nations Human Rights Commission as delegates considered the wording of their declaration against racism, but it is unlikely that the governments would adopt such charged language, according to New York Times.
AFP reported that negotiations were focusing on a text proposed by Norway to salvage the conference talks, "marred" by divisions over Arab calls for explicit denunciation of Israel.
The government official heading Israel's delegation to the UN conference, Mordechai Yadid, told a press conference Sunday that Israel was "very concerned" about its relationship with the United Nations, and had voiced its concern to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson.
"We made it quite clear to them that we are at a critical junction in our relationship with the UN and its different institutions, including the Human Rights Commission," he said.
Israel’s Channel Two reported that Peres spoke by telephone with US Secretary of State Colin Powell and told him that Israel would coordinate with the Americans its decision regarding whether to leave the conference.
US Congressman Tom Lantos, who is in Durban, told Reuters that the wording of the compromise was acceptable to the Americans.
Lantos, the ranking Democratic Party member in the House of Representative's international relations committee, said the Norwegian wording contained a specific reference to the Palestinians.
"We have made an enormous concession by agreeing to the Norwegian language as is," said Lantos.
"We will not go one step beyond this," he said. He did not give any further details of the resolution, but said he had just spoken by telephone with Powell.
Both Washington and the European Union have resisted any attempt to single out the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in draft texts at the UN World Conference Against Racism.
Norwegian Ambassador Sverre Bergh Johansen confirmed that Norway, which played a key role in brokering the Oslo Accords, had been asked by the conference to try to break the impasse over the Middle East.
Mary Robinson, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, asked media representatives Sunday at the conference to help prevent the "hijacking" of the conference by the Mideast conflict. Robinson said that the media representatives were responsible for dealing with other topics of the conference, such as slavery compensation and minority rights.
Meanwhile, Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa was quoted as saying Sunday that Arab efforts to condemn Israeli acts against Palestinians did not mean they opposed condemning past crimes against Jews.
"Arabs will not stand in the way of condemning crimes committed against Jews in the past. But at the same time, they will not accept silence on any racist practices Israel pursues today," he said in a statement.
Moussa told Annan on Saturday that Arabs wanted the conference to succeed – Albawaba.com
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