France has decided not to participate in the Durban IV conference on the 20 September in New York ‘’due to the antisemitic elements attached to the entire Durban process since 2001,’’ an official statement said.
France joins the US, UK, Germany, Canada and Australia in boycotting the conference organized by the UN for the 20th anniversary of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001.
In the past, in 2009 and 2011, many Western countries, including France, had already boycotted the follow-up conference in Durban, to protest against anti-Semitic statements made there.
“Concerned by the history of anti-Semitic statements made at the UN conference on racism, the President of the Republic has decided that France will not participate in the follow-up conference to be held this year,” the Elysée palace said.
The first conference in Durban, from August 31 to September 8, 2001, a few days before the terrorist attacks of September 11, was marked by deep divisions over the issues of anti-Semitism, colonialism and slavery. The United States and Israel walked out of the conference, protesting the tone of the meeting, after Arab countries tried to equate Zionism with racism.
In 2011, in Geneva, several representatives of European countries had left the conference room during an anti-Israeli speech made at the podium by the Iranian president at the time, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad had called the Holocaust “an ambiguous and dubious issue.”
….”
The decision has been rendered public this morning 13 August by the Quai d’Orsay (Foreign Ministry)
Shimon Samuels, Director of International Relations of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, welcome the French decision. “This success is due to the parties and NGO’s who brought the matter to the attention of the French government,’’ he said.