- guardian.co.uk, Sunday September 2 2001 00.26 BST
Meetings behind closed doors grappled with two bitterly divisive issues - European refusal to call the transatlantic slave trade a crime against humanity and attempts to accuse Israel of racism in its treatment of Palestinians.
Countries left out of the talks expressed resentment at their exclusion and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan yesterday warned that either issue could wreck the conference.
'We will give comfort to the worst elements of every society if we fail and we should not allow one issue or other to derail this conference,' he said.
Western states have already marginalised the conference by sending in general, low-level delegations. While nine African presidents attended as well as the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, the Americans have sent only a mid-level official, and the highest ranking delegate from the European Union is German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who is concentrating his efforts on brokering a truce - for the duration of the conference, at least - between Yasser Arafat and the Israeli delegation.
European nations are refusing to call the transatlantic slave trade a crime against humanity on the grounds it was legal at the time and to do so would have legal ramifications today. The South Africans accuse the British of being among the most intractable on this point, but the UK says it is merely following an agreed EU position to apologise in the strongest terms without using the contested phrase.
Yesterday, Nigeria's President, Olusegun Obasanjo, said Africa wanted a heart felt apology not reparations. 'Monetary compensation would hurt the dignity of Africans,' he said.
'The legacies of several centuries of racial discrimination and dehumanisation through slavery, slave trade and colonisation have the deep and fundamental consequences of poverty...and marginalisation of Africans from the rest of the world.'
But while all nine African presidents speaking at the conference identified slavery and colonialism as the cause of their continent's woes, not one has spoken about the modern-day problems of ethnicity within the borders of many of their countries.
Nigeria is grappling with deepening ethnic divisions that are exacerbated by religious intolerance. The reintroduction of hard-line Islamic law in northern Nigeria has led to massacres in various parts of the country amid growing friction between the mostly Muslim Hausas and largely Christian Yorubas. But Obasanjo made no mention of the growing ethnic hatred and violence.
Similarly, Rwanda's President, Paul Kagame, steered clear of discussing the Hutu-Tutsi divide which has brought such misery to his own country and neighbouring Burundi.
Annan said he did not believe African leaders are avoiding issues of racism within their own borders.
'The historical problems have been raised because they are very much to the fore. I hope if they did focus on that it is not because they are oblivious to the problem in their own countries,' he said. 'The impression should not be created that they are ignoring the present crises and taking refuge in problems of the past. At least I hope they are not.'
Many of the leaders at the conference have unenviable human rights records.
Obasanjo is facing scrutiny in his own country over his time as a military ruler in the Seventies. Kagame's troops have been accused of widespread human rights abuses, sometimes driven by ethnic hatred, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Castro used his speech to launch an attack on the US by calling the international financial order a modern means of enslaving poorer countries.
'That rich and squandering world is in possession of the technical and financial resources necessary to pay what is due to mankind.
'The hegemonic superpower should also pay back its special debt to African-Americans, to Native Americans living in reservations, and to the tens of millions of Latin American and Caribbean immigrants,' he said.
But Castro made no mention of racism in Cuba where black people say they are still discriminated against by the Hispanic majority.
