South Africa will not host a planned conference on racism next year, which was to be the sequel to the controversial conference held in Durban in 2001.
The UN Watch reports that diplomatic sources have confirmed that South Africa has dropped its offer to host the conference, which it says was announced by President Thabo Mbeki in February.
The event is now planned for a European city in April or May next year, according to the UN Watch, a Geneva-based organisation that monitors the UN's compliance with its charter.
This morning Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman Ronnie Mamoepa confirmed that South Africa would not be hosting the conference. However, he said, "I don't think that we ever offered".
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'Prevent a repeat of the ugly street scenes of Durban' UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said the organisation welcomed the apparent turnaround, saying that the group had been "alarmed" that the conference, dubbed Durban 2, would be hosted in South Africa again.
"The expected adoption of a controlled UN headquarters as the venue, be it Geneva, Paris or Vienna, is something we fought for, as one of many necessary steps to prevent a repeat of the ugly street scenes of Durban in 2001," said Neuer.
At the last conference in 2001, emotions ran high when US and Israeli delegates walked out of the conference charging that the gathering had an "anti-Israel bias".
At the time, then US secretary of state Colin Powell, who had stayed away from the conference, said the draft declaration contained "hateful language".
According to UN Watch, earlier this year Mbeki told Parliament that South Africa would "play host to the review conference to evaluate the implementation of the decisions of the World Conference Against Racism".
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This article was originally published on page 1 of Cape Argus on April 29, 2008
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