Israel CERD report consideration – Press release

DPI – Press Releases

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6.3.98

REGULAR PRESS BRIEFING BY THE INFORMATION SERVICE

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Another correspondent said she would like to be specific about this point because she attended part of the debate on Israel two days ago in the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. According to the correspondent, ‘fur was flying' and there was a lot of passion around. She said the Egyptian independent expert ‘got a little out of hand as did other people'. When she looked at the release the following morning, she was absolutely amazed, it was like something surrealistic as there was absolutely no mention at all of this. Ms. Gastaut said that she would look into this and get back to the correspondents. Ms. Gastaut said that she was aware of what had happened in the meeting and she would check on what exactly had been put in the press release and get back to the correspondents.

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Ms. Gastaut said that first of all, she wanted to remind the journalist that the spokesperson, i.e. Mr. Mills, drew the attention of the correspondents to which country report was about to be examined by a human rights committee in a public meeting. Since Mr. Mills told correspondents in advance, then they knew about it and could listen to everything or could be in the room. Second, the Information Service's press releases were not summary records. Summary records were produced by the Conference Services and they appeared two or three days later. The Information Service issued summaries on the same day in the form of press releases. She said that both she and Mr. Jamel Ben Yahmed who was responsible for press releases were very careful concerning the editorial policy. She had to add that the only human rights meetings that the Service covered speaker by speaker were the proceedings of the Human Rights Commission and the Subcommission. The meetings of the treaty bodies were covered with summaries of a general

nature. This was because of the financial crisis. If correspondents knew the number of persons who were available to produce these press releases, they would understand the need for the policy that was applied. As long as the Information Service did not have greater resources to produce more detail, press releases would be limited to around four pages. Four pages to cover three hours of meetings gave correspondents the general idea. She reiterated that she would look into the specific case that was raised.

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