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EU Approves Consensus Bid at Racism Talks After Israeli-U.S. Walkout
DURBAN, South Africa, Sept 4 (News Agencies) - South African-led efforts to find middle ground to save a global racism conference after the United States and Israel walked out over anti-Israeli language appeared to be making progress Tuesday evening.
The European Union considered that a new draft text on the Middle East, proposed by South Africa, was an "acceptable basis for negotiation", a Belgian foreign ministry spokesman said.
"After consultation with other partners, the EU believes the draft constitutes an acceptable basis for negotiation," said Koen Vervaeke, spokesman for the Belgian foreign ministry.
"The [EU] presidency [Belgium] has been mandated to participate in the convened drafting group," he said, adding that the group, which would work further on the text, had already started meeting on Tuesday evening.
He declined to give details on the proposed new text.
South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma spent Tuesday drafting the new draft after overnight talks with Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel, president of the Council of Europe, and Amr Mussa, secretary general of the Arab League.
Suleyman al-Herfi, a member of the Palestinian delegation and the Palestinian Authority's permanent representative in South Africa, said negotiations Tuesday had not brought any basic changes.
"The Americans, the Israelis and the Europeans are very important, but they are not the conference," he said.
"We have to take into consideration the majority of the conference."
The drafting group is expected to include countries from different continents, a source close to the discussions told Agence France-Presse (AFP) earlier.
Harsh language in the conference's original draft documents proposed by Arab and Islamic countries that accuse Israel of "racist" practices towards the Palestinians prompted the U.S.-Israeli withdrawal late Monday.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson praised the European Union's participation at the U.N. conference as "very constructive".
"I believe that the EU will want the text on the Middle East, and the overall text of this world conference, to be appropriate to a world conference against racism..," Robinson told a press briefing.
"They will be vigilant to see that there is not language which they would consider to be inappropriate."
The 15-nation EU, which announced it would be staying in Durban and was united after the U.S.-Israeli pullout, has won the backing of the 13 EU-candidate countries for its position at the talks, a source close to the discussions told AFP.
"In all, that makes 28 united countries which will stay or leave together," the source said, adding that the Europeans had earlier given themselves 24 hours to assess drafts of the new text before deciding whether to leave or stay until the scheduled end of the conference on Friday.
Robinson told reporters Tuesday she believed the conference was "back on course, we're steadied", while acknowledging, "Everybody knows the time is short".
But she added: "Very often the experience in world conferences is it doesn't happen until the end of the negotiations. ... The really tough issues don't get agreed until the 11th hour.
"And I would anticipate that we probably won't put these to bed until sometime on Friday - that's normal," she told reporters.
The United States and Israel boycotted both previous U.N. racism conferences, in 1978 and 1983, also over the Middle East.
A total of 163 countries are taking part in the U.N. conference, bringing the number of people accredited to the event to almost 18,000, conference spokeswoman Sue Markham said Tuesday.
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