Saturday September 1 12:20 PM ET

U.N. Race Meet Racked by Mideast, Slavery

By Richard Waddington

DURBAN, South Africa (Reuters) - Middle East tensions threatened to sink a U.N. conference against racism on Saturday despite pleas by Nelson Mandela to seize the chance to end the contagion of discrimination.

Mandela, the father of South Africa's multi-racial democracy, made an impassioned call for delegates to put aside differences and act to rid the world of a disease that was an ''ailment of the mind and the soul.''

``It kills many more than any contagion. It dehumanizes anyone it touches,'' the 83-year-old former South African President said in a recorded speech to the second day of the U.N. Conference Against Racism.

Despite Mandela's words, attention focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat again branding Israel as racist.

Reparations to Africans for centuries of slavery also remained a stumbling block.

Arafat, who on Friday had accused Israel of ethnic cleansing by driving Palestinians from their homes in the occupied territories, repeated the charge on Saturday.

``The ugliness of these Israeli racist policies and practices against the Palestinian people has become manifest and obvious during the Intifada,'' he said.

He was referring to the 11-month-old Palestinian uprising against Israeli military occupation in which at least 548 Palestinians and 157 Israelis have been killed.

On Saturday the Palestinians accused Israel of assassinating a senior official in a car blast in Gaza. Israel denied responsibility.

ANNAN, FISCHER EXPRESS CONCERN

U.N. General-Secretary Kofi Annan warned rows over the Middle East -- Arab states want a condemnation of Israel included in the final declaration -- and controversy over how to handle the historic issue of slavery threatened the conference.

African and Caribbean states want a formal apology and some countries are pressing for financial reparations.

``The conference has given the world an opportunity to face the issue of racism squarely. But two issues threaten consensus -- the Middle East and slavery,'' Annan told a news conference shortly before he left Durban for Kinshasa.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, the most senior representative of the G8 states in Durban said it risked failure because of ``singularizing Israel'' and ``one-sided condemnations.''

The draft declaration does not equate the Israeli doctrine of Zionism with racism but it says: ``Foreign occupation founded on settlements...(is) a new kind of apartheid, a crime against
humanity.''

The United States, Canada and Israel have only junior level delegations at the meeting, attended by some 6,000 delegates from 153 countries, in protest at what they see as anti-Israeli bias.

Washington has warned it may withdraw altogether before the conference closes on September 7 unless offending language is removed.

CASTRO LASHES WASHINGTON

Veteran Cuban leader Fidel Castro told the conference nobody had the right to dictate to a United Nations gathering.

The 75-year-old President charged Israel with ``genocide'' over the number of Palestinian deaths since the uprising began last October.

Castro also said rich states ought to pay compensation for slavery and exploitation of the Third World.

President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, Africa's most populous state, said an apology was the only way to heal the wound left by the human trafficking and that an apology did not necessarily open countries to financial claims.

Some 12 million Africans were shipped to north and south America, often in chains, during the some 400 years in which the trade flourished until the 19th century.

``We must demonstrate the political will and assume the responsibility for the historical wrong that is owed to the victims of slavery,'' Obasanjo told the conference.

The U.S. and European countries are wary of offering too explicit an apology for fear of legal litigation and have rejected any notion of reparations.

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