PARIS: More than 150 European ex-diplomats and lawmakers on Wednesday urged France\u2019s foreign minister to retract \u201cinaccurate\u201d comments about a UN expert on Palestinians rights who he wants to resign.<\/p>\n
France and Germany have called for Francesca Albanese to step down over remarks in which she referred to a \u201ccommon enemy of humanity\u201d after criticising \u201cmost of the world\u201d and the media for enabling Israel\u2019s \u201cgenocide\u201d in Gaza.<\/p>\n
Critics and Israel have accused the UN Special Rapporteur of referring to Israel as a \u201ccommon enemy\u201d, while Albanese has denounced this as a \u201cmanipulation\u201d and \u201ccompletely false\u201d.<\/p>\n
In response to a question about the comments, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot on Feb 11 told parliament she should step down.<\/p>\n
In an open letter, the former diplomats criticised what they called \u201cthe use of inaccurate and manipulated elements to discredit a holder of an independent UN mandate\u201d.<\/p>\n
They called on Barrot to \u201cretract his inaccurate statements about Ms Albanese and correct them.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis controversy must not divert attention from the massacres of civilians, nor from the humanitarian crisis and the massive human rights violations taking place in Gaza,\u201d said the signatories.<\/p>\n
The letter, written in French, was signed by mostly former foreign ministers and diplomats from the Netherlands.<\/p>\n
More than a dozen current members of parliament and senators from Europe were also among the signatories, along with a former foreign minister of South Africa.<\/p>\n
Columbia University activist<\/p>\n
A US immigration judge has blocked the deportation of a Palestinian graduate student who helped organize protests at Columbia University against Israel\u2019s war in Gaza, according to US media reports.<\/p>\n
Mohsen Mahdawi was arrested by immigration agents last year as he was attending an interview to become a US citizen. Mahdawi had been involved in a wave of demonstrations that gripped several major US university campuses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PARIS: More than 150 European ex-diplomats and lawmakers on Wednesday urged France\u2019s foreign minister to retract \u201cinaccurate\u201d comments about a UN expert on Palestinians rights who he wants to resign. France and Germany have called for Francesca Albanese to step down over remarks in which she referred to a \u201ccommon enemy of humanity\u201d after criticising […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16094,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16093"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16095,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16093\/revisions\/16095"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}