PARIS: The race to lead the UN s culture and education agency UNESCO kicked off Monday amid controversy over charges that anti-Israel comments from Egypt s candidate Farouk Hosni make him unfit for the top job.
Representatives from the 58 nations that make up UNESCO s executive council were meeting in Paris ahead of a first round of voting on September 17 to elect a successor to Japan s Koichiro Matsuura.
Egypt s culture minister for 22 years, Hosni is lobbying to cement his status as the frontrunner among nine candidates to become director general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
But Hosni s bid has run into opposition from Auschwitz survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel and US and French commentators.
The clamor centers on comments Hosni made in May 2008 in the Egyptian parliament when he vowed to burn Israeli books if he found any in Egyptian libraries.
Hosni has since voiced regret for the comments and sought to explain that they were uttered during an angry exchange with hardliners from the Muslim Brotherhood.
But Wiesel and intellectuals Bernard-Henri Levy and Claude Lanzmann wrote in Le Monde newspaper that the international community must spare itself from the shame of appointing Farouk Hosni to the post of UNESCO director general.
Hosni has made numerous statements of the same ilk that precede him as he vies for a role as a cultural unifying force across today s world at UNESCO, they wrote in the opinion piece published in May.
The 193-member UN agency has a mandate to promote global understanding through culture, science and education.
Hosni s main rival for the post is European Commissioner for External Relations and ex-Austrian foreign minister, Benita Ferrero-Waldner.
But the choice of the Egyptian candidate has won much support in Europe as an attempt to reach out to the Muslim world.
France must remain officially neutral on the issue as it is the host country for UNESCO, but officials have said privately that Paris favors Hosni for the job.
The Elysee has argued that Hosni has acknowledged that the comments were a mistake, while noting that neither Israel nor the United States have stood up to oppose his candidacy.
In an interview in Cairo, Hosni sought to fend off the accusations leveled against him and said his candidacy was based on a basic philosophy which is reconciliation between peoples.
As head of UNESCO, he would encourage a rapprochement in the whole region, without exception, Hosni said.
A recent article in the prestigious American Foreign Policy magazine described Hosni s bid as scandalous and accused him of echoing the rampant Judeophobia of Egyptian intellectual circles.
Other candidates in the running are Lithuania s UNESCO ambassador Ina Marciulionyte, Bulgarian ex-foreign minister Irina Bokova, former Algerian foreign minister Mohammed Bedjaoui and former Russian deputy foreign minister Alexander Yakovenko.
There are two candidates from Africa: Tanzania s Sospeter Muhongo, a geologist, and Benin s ambassador to UNESCO Noureini Tidjani-Serpos.
The only candidate from the Americas is Ivonne Baki from Ecuador, a former trade minister and ambassador to the United States.
About five rounds of voting are expected to be held to pick the new director general and the appointment is to be endorsed by UNESCO s 193-member assembly in October.
