Fischer backs Israel against Palestinian right of return
( 2001-07-18 09:19 ) (7 )

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer has voiced support for Israel's refusal to allow Palestinian refugees an automatic right to return which could swell the population of the occupied territories, officials from the Simon Wiesenthal Center said Tuesday.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper said after meeting with Fischer that the foreign minister had told him he understood Israeli objections to a Palestinian "right of return," which would see millions return to the territories.

Cooper said Fischer had said that if this concept were applied to post-World War II Europe, "it would destabilize the entire continent."

The German foreign ministry refused to comment on the talks, saying Fischer had viewed them as confidential.

The right of return is a major stumbling block in now-suspended peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

Fischer also said that "anti-Zionism inevitably leads to anti-Semitism," according to Cooper, who is an associate dean at the Wiesenthal Center's headquarters in Los Angeles.

The rabbi quoted Fischer as saying he rejected any attempt to label Israel as a racist state.

Fischer had spoken out during a visit to Berlin last week by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against allegedly anti-Semitic comments Assad had made during a visit by Pope John Paul II to Syria.

Cooper said the purpose of Tuesday's meeting was to discuss the Jewish human rights organization's "growing concerns that next month's UN conference in Durban on racism and xenophobia may be hijacked to de-legitimize the state of Israel and marginalize anti-Semitism and the memory of the Holocaust."

Shimon Samuels, the center's Paris-based director for international relations, also participated in the talks with Fischer, the center said in a communique.