United States Withdraws From U.N. Conference on Racism
JOIE CHEN, CNN ANCHOR: A controversial decision coming in South Africa just a few hours ago. The United States and Israel withdrew from the U.N. Conference Against Racism. CNN International's Tumi Makgabo joins us now from Durban in South Africa. That's the site of that conference against racism. Tumi, talk to us a little bit about the scene of what happened. Did the U.S. and Israeli delegations like storm out the door? Tell us about the scene.</s>TUMI MAKGABO, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, actually, you know, it is a lot of diplomats gathered here, Joie, so there wasn't really any storming out. But basically what happened is that a few hours ago the United States delegation announced that they would be leaving the conference because of language that would be included in the final declaration of the conference, which was very strongly condemning Israel. Shortly thereafter, then, the Israeli delegation said that they too would be leaving based on the very same issues.</s>CHEN: But Tumi, this is language that had come up as being a point of contention even before the conference got under way? Had they been trying to work it out?</s>MAKGABO: Initially, what had happened -- initially, what had happened, Joie, is the fact that people wanted Zionism equated with racism. That, of course, prior to the start of the conference was removed from the potential declaration at the end of the conference. Then what ended up happening is the continued criticism of Israel -- equating their activities with racial discrimination, crimes against humanity, and genocide -- were put forward by the NGO caucuses that were here. That, of course, their proposal was being considered to be included in the final declaration, and that seems to be the point where things started to get rather troublesome.</s>CHEN: Tumi, we've got here a question from our Web chat audience wanting to get some information from you. MariGrace Centofante asks: "Exactly, what is this U.N. conference on racism supposed to do?"</s>MAKGABO: The point of the whole conference, Joie, is that the leaders of the world, not necessarily heads of state, but ministers from various countries around the world have been asked to come together to come forward with some kind of declaration to begin dealing with issues of discrimination. Now, those include racial discrimination, discrimination against women, discrimination against children, gender issues, issues such as xenophobia, when people are concerned about immigrant issues, coming into their own countries and threatening their livelihoods and so on. So the purpose of the agenda was that they were supposed to come together and try to wrangle that out. That seems to be getting along but with a few hiccups along the way, Joie.</s>CHEN: Our friend and colleague from CNN International -- that's our network for outside the United States -- Tumi Makgabo, thanks very much for being with us from Durban in South Africa. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com