Australia withdraws from Durban III
I really hope this doesn't cost them a seat on the Security Council, but even if it does, I'm thrilled that they did it because it's the only right and moral thing to do.
Australia has withdrawn from the Durban III conference.
A spokesperson for Prime Minister Julia Gillard said Australia had decided not to attend the High Level Meeting on the Durban Declaration and Plan of Action scheduled to be held in New York on September 22.
Referred to as the Durban conference after the original event held in Durban, South Africa, in 2001, the meeting was aimed at combating global racism. However, it was marred by anti-Semitism.
Australia and many other countries walked out of the first meeting while the Kevin Rudd government subsequently boycotted the second conference in 2009, which saw Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad deliver a long tirade against Israel.
Ms Gillard's spokesman said Australia remained involved in the early stages of consultations on the High Level Meeting in order to oppose attempts to endorse extreme language or explicit references in the text of the Durban Declaration.
"But we have not been convinced that the High Level Meeting will avoid unbalanced criticism of Israel and the airing of anti-Semitic views," the spokesman said in a statement.
"This occurred at the original Durban World Conference on Racism (2001) and the subsequent Review Conference (2009). Australia did not attend either conference.
"Nor would Australia be able to support a meeting that chooses to reaffirm the original Durban Declaration, as appears likely."
Heh.
Labels: Australia, Crocodile Dundee, Durban III, Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd
How much is a Security Council seat worth?
How much is a UN Security Council seat worth? Apparently Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard (pictured) believes that it's worth
throwing Israel under the bus.
And then there is Australia. On Thursday, Australian diplomats said they were going to stay in the negotiations. They believed the draft declaration was a good starting point and were hopeful about the future. What happened to Australia’s former voice, having pulled out of the Durban II conference in the firm belief that lipstick on a caterpillar does not suffice?
Australia, which is running for a seat on the Security Council this fall, is running scared. The Australians are well aware of what happened to Canada at the last Security Council election. The Canadians were defeated despite a huge investment spiritually, politically and financially in the U.N. for decades because the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper refused to abandon support for Israel, free expression and other rights in the face of repeated challenges from Islamic and Arab states at the U.N. Human Rights Council and General Assembly. Evidently, Australian principles aren’t quite so dear.
And Australia isn't the only one declaring that the draft declaration - which would result in over 100 heads of state adopting the 'Durban declaration' condemning Israel as racist at September's Durban III conference - is a good basis for discussion.
The co-chairs from Cameroon and Monaco made the agenda painfully obvious. They insisted that the 2011 declaration will “not re-open previously agreed text” since their “mandate is clearly not to renegotiate the Durban Declaration.” On the contrary, Durban III will have the Durban Declaration “at its core.”
In light of such an admission, the maneuvering of Germany proved most pathetic of all. German diplomats announced that Germany was a beacon of fighting discrimination. They then declared that the draft declaration, which commemorates and reinforces Durban I, was a good basis for discussion, and they were happily prepared to keep engaging in this “constructive” manner. They did manage to note that singling out any country will not be acceptable to them.
In short, according to Germany, a square peg can be fit into a round hole. The Durban Declaration already singles out Israel. The purpose of Durban III is to applaud the Durban Declaration. At Durban II in Geneva in 2009, Germany pulled out just two days before Ahmadinejad opened the conference on the anniversary of Hitler’s birth. True to form (which Germany would have known months beforehand) Ahmadinejad said: “The word Zionism personifies racism that falsely resorts to religion and abuses sentiments to hide their hatred and ugly faces." How long will it take the Germans to figure it out this time?
...
Inspired by the weakness of democratic states across the U.N. human rights system – the United Kingdom and France evidently thought at Thursday's negotiations that dead silence was acceptable – the Russians pushed the envelope and circulated lengthy additional suggestions for a Durban III declaration. The Russians are undoubtedly working in collaboration with the 56 states in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
Disgusting. Simply disgusting. Will the US speak out against it? Don't hold your breaths. It's a miracle Obama decided to withdraw from the conference this far in advance. For him to actually speak out against it would be a flying pigs moment.
This all makes us appreciate Canada again. Those Israelis with travel budgets ought to consider visiting Canada. It's a beautiful country (I've been to Montreal and Toronto and have driven from the US border to Montreal and from Niagara Falls to Windsor).
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Durban III, Julia Gillard, UN Security Council elections
Wikileaks: Australia fears nuclear war if Israel attacks Iran
They may be thousands of miles away on their own land mass, but the Australians are afraid - very afraid - of the consequences of an
Israeli strike on Iran, according to a cable from the US embassy in Canberra that was exposed by Wikileaks.
"The AIC's (Australian intelligence community's) leading concerns with respect to Iran's nuclear ambitions centre on understanding the timeframe of a possible weapons capability, and working with the United States to prevent Israel from independently launching uncoordinated military strikes against Iran," an embassy official wrote to Washington in March 2009.
"They are immediately concerned that Iran's pursuit of nuclear capabilities would lead to a conventional war -- or even nuclear exchange -- in the Middle East involving the United States that would draw Australia into a conflict."
Another cable sent four months earlier reported on Australian concerns about a unilateral Israeli military strike against Iran and "the likelihood of an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities".
The leaked letters also reveal that Australian intelligence agencies see Iran's nuclear ambitions as a strategy to deter foreign attacks and argue it would be wrong to view Iran as a "rogue state", the newspaper said.
The cables were prompted by a US initiative to solicit responses to Washington possibly engaging Tehran in a security dialogue, and concluded that Australia would likely not object to the United States if it chose to do so.
That sounds a little far-fetched to me, but the good news is that both the current Prime Minister and the previous one are strongly pro-Israel.
The correspondence shows that the Australian government, under both former prime minister Kevin Rudd and his successor Julia Gillard, is generally supportive of Israel.
But they say that Rudd's previous strong condemnation of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had prompted Tehran to take retaliatory measures against the Australian Embassy in Iran. The newspaper did not detail these measures but said they made it harder for officials to conduct day-to-day business.
According to one cable, Rudd told Israeli ambassador to Australia Yuval Rotem that Ahmadinejad was a "loathsome individual on every level", adding that his anti-Semitism "turns my stomach".
I'd love to know what those measures were. I suspect we will find out eventually.
Labels: Australia, Iranian nuclear program, Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd
I really hope this doesn't cost them a seat on the Security Council, but even if it does, I'm thrilled that they did it because it's the only right and moral thing to do.
