World envoys to the United Nations cultural organisation UNESCO started voting on Thursday for a new chief, as the Egyptian frontrunner for the job battled to fight off charges of anti-Semitism. Egypt's culture minister for 22 years, Faruq Hosni is seen as best placed among nine candidates to take over from Japan's Koichiro Matsuura as director general of the UN's culture and education agency.
Supporters say the Egyptian's election would send a positive signal from the West towards the Muslim world, but the race has been clouded by charges that anti-Israel comments made by Hosni make him unfit for the role. His detractors include Auschwitz survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel - who says his appointment would "shame" the international community - as well as the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre and US and French intellectuals.
In his long career, Hosni has often been accused of promoting anti-Semitism, in particular after May 10, 2008 when he told the Egyptian parliament: "I'd burn Israeli books myself if I found any in libraries in Egypt."
Fighting off the charges in an interview ahead of the first round of voting, Hosni insisted his comment was made during an angry exchange with hard-liners from the Muslim Brotherhood and had been taken out of context. He told France 24 television he had been referring only to "Israeli books that insult Islam," which he was accused of tolerating in Egypt's libraries.
"I restored all the synagogues (in Egypt). Why would I do that if I was an anti-Semite?" he asked, holding up as proof of his good faith the fact he attended a Holocaust memorial ceremony earlier this year. He also denied personally inviting a prominent Holocaust revisionist, the French philosopher Roger Garaudy, to Cairo, one of a string of acts held against him by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre.
"Just because Roger Garaudy was invited to Egypt doesn't mean the country is anti-Semitic or that its culture minister is anti-Semitic," Hosni argued. A recent article in the prestigious American magazine Foreign Policy described Hosni's bid as "scandalous" and accused him of echoing the "rampant Judeophobia" of Egyptian intellectual circles.
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