Saudi women heard -- not seen -- during forum on status\nRIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- One woman criticized rules that keep Saudi women from teaching boys. Another said working women should be allowed to do more than teach. Still others called for more rights for divorced women.\nSaudi women were allowed to be heard -- but not seen -- at a three-day forum this week on their status in this conservative Islamic kingdom.\nThe King Abdul Aziz Center for National Dialogue invited 70 prominent Saudis, half of them women, to the holy city of Medina to discuss the role of women.\nMen sat in one room, women in another. They shared their views through video conferencing, although the men faced a blank screen due to bans on women showing their faces in public.\nThe forum was covered by state television and by the private Saudi-owned station Al-Arabiya, which focused its cameras on the men as it aired the voices of the women.\nThe forum ended Tuesday with vague calls for women to be given more opportunities to work and to participate in public life, and a pointed reminder that their role as wives and mothers was "an essential job."\nStill, it was "a good first step," said Nawal al-Rashid, who recently was elected head of the new national press union in Saudi Arabia.
Conference on racism, anti-Semitism on Internet opens\nPARIS -- Experts gathered in Paris Wednesday seeking a common approach to combatting racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic propaganda on the Internet, believed to be a chief factor in rising numbers of hate crimes.\nOfficials from more than 60 countries were attending the two-day conference aimed at finding ways to keep racist information off the Web without compromising free speech and freedom of expression.\nThe dilemma, acute because the Internet is both global and tough to regulate, was shown by the widespread and illegal sharing of music online that has confounded record companies. Terror groups have also used the Internet to plot attacks.\nOfficials in countries like France, which has experienced a surge in anti-Semitic violence in the past several years, are pushing for tougher regulations to curb online hate speech.\n"We are at a particular, 'hinge' moment in our common fight against intolerance," French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said in opening remarks to the conference.\n"Our responsibility is to underline that by its own characteristics -- notably, immediacy and anonymity -- the Internet has seduced the networks of intolerance," he said.\nFrance has noted a "clear relationship" between racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic propaganda and hate crime, he said.\nU.S. Assistant Attorney General Dan Bryant acknowledged the American approach differs from that of other countries.\n"We believe that government efforts to regulate bias-motivated speech on the Internet are fundamentally mistaken," Bryant said. "At the same time, however, the United States has not stood and will not stand idly by, when individuals cross the line from protected speech to criminal conduct."\nBryant said the United States believes the best way to reduce hate speech was to confront it "head on" by promoting tolerance, understanding and other ideas that run counter to racism.
Islamic conference backs new Iraqi government in closing declaration\nISTANBUL, Turkey -- The world's largest Islamic organization pledged Wednesday to "actively help" Iraq in its transition to sovereignty and democracy -- support seen as key to boosting the stature of the U.S.-backed Iraqi interim government.\nThe 57-country Organization of the Islamic Conference, wrapping up a three-day foreign ministers' meeting in Istanbul, also called on the international community to give priority to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict and said Islamic countries will work to promote reform and development.\nThe Istanbul Declaration was adopted at the closing session of the three-day conference.\nThe declaration announced its support "for steps toward ending the occupation of Iraq." It supports the process of the transfer of authority to the Iraqis and stresses that the transfer of authority "must be full."\nThe OIC also "decided to help Iraq actively in the transition process and work to fulfill its needs," it added.\nThe declaration did not elaborate. But it was unlikely that peacekeeping troops to help the U.S.-led forces would be offered, and such help would probably be political and economic. Most OIC countries opposed the U.S.-led war that ousted Saddam Hussein last year.\n"The issue is not sending forces. What the situation in Iraq needs now is that Iraqis exercise their sovereignty in full and in light of this sovereignty they decide," Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher told reporters.
