GENEVA — Dozens of western representatives at the UN-sponsored conference against racism walked out during Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s address to the forum on Monday.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 

Geneva as Ahmadinejad launched a tirade against the Israeli government.
The Iranian leader also blasted the United States for its invasion of
Iraq.

GENEVA — Dozens of western representatives at the UN-sponsored conference against racism walked out during Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s address to the forum on Monday.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 

The diplomats rose from their chairs and walked out of the hall in
Geneva as Ahmadinejad launched a tirade against the Israeli government.
The Iranian leader also blasted the United States for its invasion of
Iraq.

Israel later announced it would not attend, and in the days before the Durban Review Conference began, the United States, Italy, Holland, Germany, Poland, Australia and New Zealand followed suit.

France said Monday its ambassador to Geneva would attend but would walk out immediately if the conference turned into a platform for racist comments against Israel. Britain and the Czech Republic had earlier said they would take part in the conference, but without a high-level official.

Ahmadinejad was the only head of state to participate in the conference, and he began with a speech that seemed to give credibility to concerns the conference would focus on vilifying the Jewish state.

He branded Israel a “racist government” and accused it of “being the most cruel and racist regime,” sparking the walkout by angry western diplomats at the conference and protests from others.

In a rambling speech, Ahmadinejad also pointed a finger at the United States, Europe and Israel and said they were “destabilizing the entire world.”

“What were the root causes of the U.S. attacks against Iraq or invasion of Afghanistan? The Iraqi people have suffered enormous losses,” the Iranian president said. “Wasn’t the military action against Iraq planned by the Zionists… in the U.S. administration, in complicity with the arms manufacturing companies?

“The Security Council made it possible for that illegitimate government to be set up,” Ahmadinejad said. “For 60 years, this government was supported by the world. Many western countries say they are fighting racism, but in fact support it with occupation, bombings and crimes committed in Gaza. These countries support the criminals.”

A wigged protester shouting, “Racist! racist!” threw a soft red object, which may have been a clown’s nose, at Ahmadinejad, hitting the podium and interrupting his speech.

Ahmadinejad’s speech came as Israel prepared to mark Yom Hashoah, its own Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Iranian leader has repeatedly claimed the Holocaust never happened and has called for Israel’s destruction.

Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz met Ahmadinejad upon the latter’s arrival in Geneva on Sunday, a day before the Durban II conference was to convene. Merz had declared he planned to challenge the Iranian leader about his views on the Holocaust and Israel.

Merz also described the presence of Ahmadinejad as a good chance to discuss ways to mature bilateral ties, as well as regional and international co-operation, according to the Iranian Student News Agency.

Israel said it was recalling its ambassador to Switzerland on Monday in protest.

Israeli President Shimon Peres said in a statement he was “deeply hurt and ashamed” that Ahmadinejad was invited to speak precisely on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“There must be a limit, even to the neutrality of Switzerland. Today is the day? This is the man to speak? This is the outlook for the future?” Peres said. “I don’t want to speak too much about Iran. But in Iran, people are hanged because they are suspected of God knows what – nothing. There is a centre of hate, of blood, of terror.”

Meanwhile, U.S. President Barack Obama explained the decision to keep the United States away from the review conference as not wishing to put “an imprimatur on something we just don’t believe.”

A statement issued Saturday by the State Department said it was too late to address critical problems with the anti-racism forum, and its decision not to attend was final. The statement commended conference organizers for additional improvements to a draft outcome document that removed explicit criticisms of Israel, but said the document remained unacceptable because it endorsed the 2001 Durban Conference, which singled out Israel for criticism.

The new document’s inclusion of the endorsement, which does not specify Israel or the Palestinians, “has the same effect as inserting that original text into the current document and re-adopting it.”

Answering a question at a news conference in Trinidad & Tobago about the U.S. decision to boycott the Durban review conference, Obama noted that the initial Durban conference in 2001, which was supposed to be about racism, instead “became a session through which folks expressed antagonism toward Israel in ways that were oftentimes completely hypocritical and counterproductive.

“We expressed in the run-up to this conference our concerns that if you adopted all the language from 2001, that’s not something we could sign up for,” Obama said. “If you’re incorporating a previous conference we weren’t involved with that raised a whole set of objectionable provisions, it wouldn’t be worth it to participate because we couldn’t get past that previous issue.”

He added if that if there had been a “clean start, fresh start,” the United States would have been “happy to go.”

Obama said he does believe in the United Nations and its ability to be an “effective forum” to deal with transnational conflicts, noting that the United States is pursuing a seat on the UN Human Rights Council for the first time. He also said he told UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon he would be happy to work with the organization after the Durban conference “to see if we can move forward on some of these steps” and “partner with other countries to reduce discrimination.”

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) applauded the decision by the United States not to attend.

“President Obama’s decision not to send U.S. representation to the event is the right thing to do and underscores America’s unstinting commitment to combating intolerance and racism in all its forms and in all settings,” AIPAC said in a statement.

However, Ban Ki-moon criticized western nations for boycotting the conference, saying he was “profoundly disappointed.”

“Some nations, who by rights should be helping to forge a path to a better future, are not here,” the secretary general said as he opened the five-day meeting.

“I deeply regret that some have chosen to stand aside. I hope they will not do so for long,” Ban added, before holding his own meeting with Ahmadinejad.

Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said in a news release Sunday she deeply regretted the decision by the United States not to attend the anti-racism review conference. She urged other states to maintain their commitment to the draft outcome document that was completed last Friday.

“I am shocked and deeply disappointed by the United States’ decision not to attend a conference that aims to combat racism, xenophobia, racial discrimination and other forms of intolerance worldwide,” Pillay said. “A handful of states have permitted one or two issues to dominate their approach to this issue, allowing them to outweigh the concerns of numerous groups of people that suffer racism and similar forms of intolerance to a pernicious and life-damaging degree on a daily basis all across the world, in both developed and developing countries. These are truly global issues, and it is essential that they are discussed at a global level, however sensitive and difficult they may be.

“Some media have interpreted the U.S. withdrawal as based on the continued retention of language on defamation of religion and anti-Semitism in the outcome document, when, in fact, no such language exists in the text adopted last week,” Pillay noted. “In addition, the draft outcome document clearly states that ‘the Holocaust must never be forgotten’ and deplores all forms of racism including Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.”

She pointed out that in this respect it reflects the original 2001 Durban Declaration and Program of Action.

“I fail to see why, given that the Middle East is not mentioned in this document, politics related to the Middle East continue to intrude into the process,” she said.

Responding to U.S. concerns that the draft document incorporates the final document from the 2001 Durban conference, Pillay said, “I believe that difficulty could have been overcome. It would have been possible to make it clear in a footnote that the United States had not affirmed the original document and therefore is not in a position to reaffirm it, which is a routine practice in multilateral negotiations to enable consensus-building while allowing for individual positions to be expressed.

“And then we could have all moved on together and put the problems of 2001 behind us.”

Israel sent a delegation to Geneva to publicly protest Durban II. As part of their campaign, the Israelis planned to organize demonstrations and distribute materials on human rights violations in Iran – with particular emphasis on public executions and violence against women.

The campaign was overseen by Israel ambassador to Geneva Ronnie Lashno-Yaar, assisted by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, Nobel Prize laureate Elie Weisel and film actor Jon Voight. A special media room is providing immediate responses to anti-Israeli statements.

On Sunday, Dershowitz was escorted by Swiss federal agents away from the hotel where Ahmadinejad and Merz were meeting, after he declared plans to challenge the Iranian leader about his views on the Holocaust and Israel.

In other developments, Canadian MP Irwin Cotler, the former minister of justice and attorney general, denounced Ahmadinejad’s presence at the Durban review conference.

“It makes a mockery of the case and cause of human rights for the review conference – which is supposed to be dedicated to the struggle against racism and for human rights – to be welcoming President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, who shames the cause of human rights as he shames the great civilization of Iran and its people.”

Cotler said Ahmadinejad incites to hatred and genocide in violation of the Genocide Convention’s prohibition; is engaged in the massive repression of the rights of his own people – particularly the Baha’i religious minority; pursues the most destructive of weaponry in violation of UN Security Council resolutions; is complicit in crimes against humanity through genocidal terrorist proxies; and has used the podium of the UN General Assembly to invoke classic anti-Semitic tropes reminiscent of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

“A person who shames the cause of human rights does not deserve to be a welcome guest at a human rights conference,” Cotler continued. “Rather, such a person – who massively oppresses the rights of his own people – belongs in the docket of the accused.”

The Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor, which publicizes material on distortions of human rights issues in the Arab-Israeli conflict, said Ahmadinejad’s participation at an anti-racism conference “will further expose the failure of Durban II as a genuine human rights conference.”

Gerald Steinberg, NGO Monitor’s executive director, said: “The voices of morality which have worked to prevent another human rights disaster in the Durban framework have had a significant impact. In contrast, biased NGOs that promote this demonization have lost influence. The presence of Ahmadinejad and the focus on Iran’s gross violations of human rights will further expose the moral bankruptcy of those working for a repeat of the Durban Conference in 2001.”

In other developments, Canadian Senator Jerry Grafstein said a “counter-conference” in New York City, which will coincide with the Geneva-based review conference, could serve as “a corrective to Durban II and the UN conference that appears to be a rerun of the distorted anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism of the 2001 meeting.”

Grafstein said the counter-conference on racism and discrimination could also provide an intellectual launching pad to a completely new organization that would bring together democracies outside the UN framework.

U.S. president Ronald Reagan suggested an association of democracies, and president Bill Clinton built on that, but work toward a council of democracies is being done incrementally and in small steps, Grafstein said.

The United Nations has failed in one of its missions, that of promoting human rights, Grafstein added. This can be seen in the Durban II conference, which was organized in part by such human rights violators as Iran, Cuba and Libya. A council of democracies would share a common set of principles that current UN member do not share, he said.

The Durban II counter-conference is sponsored by the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, along with about two dozen other, mostly Jewish, organizations.

The five-day Durban Review Conference in Geneva is intended to take stock of international efforts to combat intolerance since the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, which saw the United States and Israel walk out over claims of anti-Semitism.

A draft declaration circulated earlier this year blamed Israel for the entire Middle East conflict, while human rights violations in Muslim countries were largely ignored.

Negotiators in Geneva said on Friday that most western and Muslim states had agreed to a revised declaration removing all references to Israel and the Middle East. But diplomats say Middle Eastern nations insisted that a clause about the incitement of religious hatred remain in the text, which many western countries see as a curtailment of free speech.

With files from JTA, Ha’aretz and Paul Lungen