Durban II

Editorial
August 17, 2007
New York Sun 
Original Source: http://www.nysun.com/article/60753
Later this month at Geneva, the United Nations is scheduled to convene a meeting to plan a follow up to the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, the meeting at Durban, South Africa that became such a forum for anti-Semitism and Israel-bashing that Secretary of State Powell refused to attend. We heard about the impending parley from the Web site EyeontheUN.org, edited by Anne Bayefsky, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who is a veteran U.N. watcher. In an alert headlined,  United Nations Hands Genocide Advocate Iran An Anti-racism Leadership Role, Eye on the U.N. points out that the country chairing the U.N. planning committee for Durban II is Libya. Iran and Cuba are also members of the 20-nation planning group.
The news of Libya's role had been earlier reported by our Benny Avni. His dispatch in the July 25 New York Sun quoted the executive director of another watchdog of the U.N., U.N. Watch, Hillel Neuer, as pointing out that the Libya-funded Gadhafi Prize was awarded in 2002 to a Frenchman, Roger Garaudy, who had been convicted as a Holocaust denier. It is obscene that the same racist government, Mr. Neuer said, is now in charge of fighting racism. Given that Iran's president is a Holocaust-denier who has vowed to wipe Israel off the map, the idea that the Islamic Republic has a seat on the planning body for an anti-racism conference is likewise an absurdity sadly typical of the U.N., and reminiscent of the 2001 debacle.