Israel calls for ouster of UN food officer

By Herb Keinon 
October 15, 2004
The Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1097727861522 http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1097727861522 
The UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, should be removed from his post for urging the EU to suspend ties with Israel for creating a humanitarian food crisis in the territories, Israeli officials said Thursday. 
Ziegler, according to an AFP report, will present a study to the UN General Assembly next week saying that 22 percent of children in the territories are gravely malnourished, and half of the Palestinians are dependent on food aid. 
There is only one possible weapon to fight for the right to food, that's Article 2 of the contract of association between Israel and the European Union, AFP quoted Ziegler as saying. This clause mandates that respect for human rights is an essential element of the EU-Israel Association agreement. 
Ziegler's call on the EU to suspend the association agreement comes amid increasing EU signs of frustration toward Israel, and hints of the use of possible sanctions. 
Among the sanctions being considered are not completing negotiations with Israel over joining the European Neighborhood Program, voting against Israel when the security fence issue comes up again at the UN, and curbing financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority in order to burden Israel with that task. 
According to Israeli diplomatic officials, the EU is frustrated that the road map, which it sponsored, is stymied, and is very concerned that the disengagement plan ? as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's aid Dov Weisglass intimated in a recent interview ? is an attempt to freeze the plan. 
In addition, the EU is unhappy with Israel's current military operation in the Gaza Strip, continued construction in the settlements, and the route of the security fence. 
Grave violations of the right to food have been recorded, they are clear, this accord [the association agreement] must be suspended, Ziegler said. 
Daniel Meron, head of the Foreign Ministry's human rights and organizations department, said Israel's ambassador to UN organizations in Geneva was instructed to raise the issue with UN High Commissioner on Human Rights Louise Arbour, and to call on her to disassociate herself from Ziegler's comments. 
Meron said that Ziegler, a Swiss university lecturer and leader in the Socialist International, who is said to be Jewish, is a constant critic of Israel and abuses his mandate by unfairly singling out Israel. 
Meron said Ziegler spends an inordinate amount of time on Israel, and by contrast wrote a report on the situation in Sudan that constituted a selected description of what is going on there. 
Meron said that in May Ziegler wrote to the US Caterpillar company calling on it to stop selling bulldozers to Israel, which are often used in home demolitions, or else they will be seen as abusing human rights themselves. 
UN Watch ? a Geneva-based NGO, with ties to the US Jewish community, that monitors UN organizations ? submitted a dossier against Ziegler to the UN Commission on Human Rights in July. 
According to UN Watch, Ziegler's actions evince a pattern of selective treatment of Israel, the only state singled out by the Special Rapporteur for condemnation as a Nazi-like state that commits 'state terror' and 'war crimes.' 
By contrast, Ziegler's recent press release on the ethnic cleansing in Sudan (July 9, 2004) carefully omitted any outright condemnation of the Khartoum government for its complicity in the mass displacements, rapes, and killings that have victimized over 1 million black Africans in the Darfur region.
In addition, the organization said that out of more than 190 countries, the only place in the world to which Ziegler dedicated a special mission in 2003 was the West Bank and Gaza, whose food situation he described as a 'catastrophe.'