PARIS (EJP)--- A French junior minister in charge of human rights told the representative body of French Jewry said that France “will draw red lines” at the next UN anti-racism conference known as « Durban II ».
The Durban Review Conference scheduled for Geneva in April 2009 is a follow-up to the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, south Africa, in September 2001.
The Durban I conference degenerated into a forum in which NGO’s attacked Israel and called Zionism a form of racism.
Speaking at a dinner of CRIF in the southern city of Marseilles on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the universal declaration on human rights, Rama Yade, French Secretary of State for Human Rights, saidf that France and the European Union will do everything to avoid a repeat of what happened in 2001.
According to Yade, the EU shares this view and a meeting on this question will be held next week in Brussels to elaborate a common position.
“France intends to do everything not to put into question this already fragile process," she said. “If not, I will leave the Human Rights Council," she added.
She was to reaffirm France’position at a meeting Friday of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
She expressed the hope that the United States would join the EU on this issue.
The US, Canada and Israel have already announced that they would not participate in the Durban II conference which they said appears to be heading once again towards becoming an anti-Israeli tribunal which has nothing to do with fighting racism.
Rama Yade is at 32 the youngest minister in the French government.
Like Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who is her boss, she is one of the most popular ministers in the French government.
Born in Dakar, Senegal, she attracted attention by expressing disgust at shaking the hand of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi on a visit to Libya with French president Nicolas Sarkozy in July 2007.
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Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said he had persuaded President Nicolas Sarkozy to create a Minister for Human Rights but now believed it "a mistake". Yade has embarrassed Kouchner and Sarkozy by implicitly criticising their failure to condemn human rights violations in Tibet and Libya.
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While Kadafi visited Paris at Sarkozy’s invitation, Rama Yade said he “must understand that our country is not a doormat on which a leader, terrorist or not, can wipe the blood of his crimes”.
Despite her frank speaking, the French president asked Yade to lead the governing party UMP’s list in next June’s European Parliament elections. But she refused and Sarkozy let it be known that he was “disappointed”.
Yade had also been tipped to replace Jean-Pierre Jouyet, the European Affairs Minister, who leaves the government to take another job, but the Élysée Palace has ruled her out, and Bruno LeMaire, who was once chief aide to former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, is to replace Jouyet.
The Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner – Mme Yade's immediate boss – further undermined her position by suggesting her job should be abolished.
M. Kouchner said he had persuaded President Sarkozy to create a minister for human rights but now believed it "a mistake". Mme Yade has embarrassed M. Kouchner and M. Sarkozy by implicitly criticising their failure to condemn human rights violations in Tibet and Libya.