The nomination Sunday of Federico Mayor Zaragoza of Spain to be the director general of the embattled United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was seen by Western diplomats as easing the organization’s internal tensions, including its anti-Zionist, anti-Israel tendencies.
But even combined with the withdrawal from the race of the incumbent director general, Amadou-Mahtar M’bow of Senegal, the nomination was not expected to provide the overhaul of UNESCO that many Western states seek.
The 50-member UNESCO executive board voted 30-20 to propose Mayor. His election must be ratified by UNESCO’s 158-member ruling general conference, which is scheduled to meet November 7. This vote is generally considered a formality.
Mayor was supported by Western Europe, Latin America, some Asian countries including China and the Soviet bloc. Israel is not a member of the executive, and the United States and Britain withdrew from UNESCO in 1984 and 1985, respectively.
Mayor, 53, a native of Barcelona, taught biochemistry at the universities of Madrid and Granada. He also served as minister of education in the center-right government of Adolfo Suarez. Well known as a moderate, his campaign for the post of director general was supported by a petition signed by 100 scientists and intellectuals including 11 Nobel Prize winners.
Mayor is friendly with many Israeli scientists. Members of the Spanish Jewish community say that as minister of education he was “friendly and very helpful” in assisting the community to set up Jewish day schools and the Spanish Institute of Jewish Studies.
RELIEVED BY M’BOW’S DEFEAT
Western diplomats were actually more relieved by M’bow’s defeat than by Mayor’s nomination. The 67-year-old former director general came to symbolize the political bias, the anti-Western tendencies, the pro-Arab and Third World stance and the financial and administrative waste and chaos which marked UNESCO’s last 15 years. It was during M’bow’s 13-year directorship that UNESCO adopted some of its most anti-Israel resolutions including one equating Zionism with racism. It routinely condemned Israel for its renovation work in Jerusalem and its administration of the territories, backed “liberation movements” and tried to muzzle the free press. Several Western countries including West Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium, The Netherlands and Australia — as well as Japan — have said they might withdraw if M’bow was reelected to a third term. All accused him, in the words of the last American representative, Ambassador Jean Gerard, of “having let his anti-Western prejudices move him to open hostility towards the basic values and ideals of the free world.”
Mayor’s election and M’bow’s defeat are not enough in Western eyes, however, to spell an end to UNESCO’s anti-Western policies. Both the United States and Britain have already announced that it will need more than a new director general to bring them back to the UNESCO fold. UNESCO has all the political trimmings of the United Nations without any of its restraints. Its 158 member-states shape its policies free from the veto power which the U.N. Security Council’s five permanent member states wield. UNESCO’s atmosphere, described by veteran Western diplomats as “carefree and irresponsible,” is partially attributed to its automatic Third World majority.
One required reform, according to Laura Genero, the U.S. State Department official in charge of international organizations, is a mechanism whereby major financial contributors would get a bigger voice in the way the organization is run.
Amidst the electoral struggle, financial difficulties caused by the withdrawals of the United States and Britain and the fall in the exchange rate of the dollar, the UNESCO executive board spent part of its time studying “the academic freedom in the (Israeli) occupied territories,” It adopted a resolution calling “on the occupation authorities” to respect the Geneva and Hague conventions. It also asked the new director general to launch an appeal for international support “for the preservation of the Islamic and religious heritage of Jerusalem.”
Next month, two of the general conference’s committees will study special reports on the territories and Jerusalem and will most likely adopt a new set of anti-Israel resolutions.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
