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U.N. Faces Joint Islamic-Christian Right Lobby
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The Islamic-Christian lobby has united unlikely countries |
UNITED
NATIONS, June 17 (News Agencies) - Conservative U.S. Christian
organizations have joined forces with Islamic governments to stop the
expansion of sexual and political protections and rights for gays,
women and children at United Nations conferences,
U.S.
daily newspaper, the Washington Post, reported.
The
new alliance, which coalesced during the past year, received a major
boost from U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration, which
appointed anti-abortion activists to key positions on
U.S.
delegations to U.N. conferences on global economic and social policy.
The
conservative Christians, who set aside their doctrinal differences,
cemented ties with the
Vatican
and cultivated fresh links with a powerful bloc of more than 50
moderate and hard-line Islamic governments, including
Sudan
,
Libya
,
Iraq
and
Iran
, the paper said.
“We
look at them as allies, not necessarily as friends,” said Austin
Ruse, founder and president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights
Institute, a New York-based organization that promotes conservative
values at U.N. social conferences. “We have realized that without
countries like
Sudan
, abortion would have been recognized as a universal human right in a
U.N. document.”
The
alliance of conservative Islamic states and Christian organizations
has placed the Bush administration in the awkward position of siding
with some of its most reviled adversaries, including
Iraq
and
Iran
, in a cultural skirmish against its closest European allies, which
broadly support expanding sexual and political rights.
U.S.
and Iranian officials even huddled during coffee breaks at the U.N.
summit on children in
New York
last month, according to U.N. diplomats.
But
the partnership has also provided the administration with an
opportunity to demonstrate that it shares many social values with
Islam when the
United States
is being criticized in the Muslim world for its continued support of
Israel
and the nine-month-old “war on terrorism”.
“We
have tried to point out there are some areas of agreement between [us]
and a lot of Islamic countries on these social issues,” a
U.S.
official said.
“The
main issue that brings us all together is defending the family values,
the natural family,” added Mokhtar Lamani, a Moroccan diplomat who
represents the 53-nation Organization of Islamic Conferences at the
United Nations.
“The
Republican administration is so clear in defending the family
values.”
Lamani
said he was first approached by U.S. Christian non-governmental
organizations, or NGOs, at a special session of the U.N. General
Assembly on AIDS in
New York
, June 2001.
Liberal
Western activists and governments, he said, had offended the religious
and cultural sensitivities of Islamic countries by proposing that a
final conference declaration include explicit references to the need
to protect prostitutes, intravenous drug users and “men who have sex
with men” from contracting AIDS.
“It
was totally unacceptable for us,” Lamani said. “The
Vatican
and so many NGOs came up to us saying this is exactly the same
position we are defending.”
The
Islamic-Christian alliance claimed an important victory at the U.N.
children’s meeting last month.
The
Bush administration led the coalition in blocking an effort by
European and Latin American countries to include a reference in the
final declaration to “reproductive health care services,” a term
the conservatives believed could be used to promote abortion.
The
Christian groups and Islamic countries have been seeking to build on
those gains at subsequent U.N. gatherings, pressing for greater
restrictions on abortion at an annual meeting of the World Health
Organization last month and later at a U.N. preparatory conference on
sustainable development in
Bali
,
Indonesia
.
The
World
Policy
Center
, a Mormon group established in 1997 to promote family values through
an alliance that includes conservative Christians, the Catholic Church
and Islamic governments, is holding a conference July 2002 at Brigham
Young University School of Law. It will bring anti-abortion advocates
and legal critics of the United Nations together with more than 60
U.N. diplomats, including delegates from conservative Catholic and
Islamic countries.
Ruse
first outlined his strategy for maximizing the conservatives’
leverage at the United Nations at a 1999 meeting in
Geneva
of the World Congress of Families, a gathering of advocates of
conservative family values.
It
involves “lavish[ing] all our attention” on a coalition of 12
anti-abortion countries that are willing to fight for their cause at
U.N. sessions, he said.
“Religious
leaders and politicians in the
United States
and in these select countries in the developing world should be
persuaded to encourage these governments to defend life and family at
the United Nations.”
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also:
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