U.N. Body Accuses Israel Of Racism

UNITED NATIONS — A Geneva-based agency charged with eliminating world racism added its name yesterday to the growing list of U.N. organs denouncing Israel's war against Hezbollah. Members of the agency argued that Secretary-General Annan expected them to condemn Israel.

To critics who wondered how the charge of racism could be applied to a war between two groups of Semites, one panel member — also known as an "expert" — of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said Israel would not have "reacted with the same violence if there was no racism involved," a U.N. press release summarizing the session said.

"Would Israel have resorted to the bombing of civilian infrastructure if it were fighting a non-Arab force?" the expert, Agha Shahi, asked. Another panel member, Patricia January-Bardill, said, "People only gave themselves the right to kill in such a way when they had inferiorized the victims."

The emergency meeting was organized by several of the panel members, led by a former Egyptian diplomat and Arab League official, Mahmoud Aboul-Nasr, who in the past has been criticized by the current chairman of the panel, Regis de Gouttes, for expressing support for a convicted Holocaust-denier, Roger Garaudy.

Mr. Gouttes yesterday listed other U.N. entities already dealing with the Lebanon war, warning that "the trust and legitimacy of the committee is at stake" if it takes an issue not under its mandate.

But Mr. Aboul-Nasr said Mr. Annan would expect the committee to condemn Israel. "The secretary-general had said the acts had to be condemned in the strongest possible terms, and that was what the secretary-general expected of the committee today," he said.

"It is obscene that, on the same day that Iranian President Ahmadinejad once again calls for the destruction of Israel, a U.N. body provides him moral support by slamming Israel in such a one-sided fashion," the Geneva-based director of the human rights organization U.N. Watch, Hillel Neuer, said.

As the U.N. Security Council yesterday discussed a possible two-stage resolution on Lebanon that would begin with a cessation of hostilities followed by cease-fire based on comprehensive arrangements, Mr. Ahmadinejad offered his own two-stage plan.

"The real cure for the conflict is elimination of the Zionist regime, but there should be first an immediate ceasefire," he told Islamic leaders in Malaysia.

Mr. Annan was not available yesterday for comment on the call to eliminate a member state, but a spokesman, Farhan Haq, noted that the secretary-general had criticized similar statements by Mr. Ahmadinejad in the past.