BY ADAM DAIFALLAH

WASHINGTON - A speaker at a meeting co-hosted by Fortune magazine and a Saudi-backed foundation yesterday defended his newspaper’s description of the pro-Israel lobby as “subhuman.”

Fortune, a New York-based magazine that is a subsidiary of AOL Time Warner, sponsored the symposium with the Arab Thought Foundation, a group funded with at least $17 million from Saudi royalty and prominent Arab businessmen, including $1.5 million from Bakr bin Laden, the estranged brother of Osama bin Laden. Yesterday’s Arab symposium is part of the larger Fortune Global Forum, an annual business meeting taking place this week in Washington.

The Arab Thought Foundation’s stated purpose is to promote “open dialogue among Arabs, and between Arabs and the West on pressing cultural, educational, economic, scientific and political issues.” But for an organization purporting to promote dialogue, yesterday’s conference appeared to be a continuation of the past, with plenty of criticism of Israel and American policy. Critics have argued that the Arab Thought Foundation is part of Saudi Arabia’s attempt to rehabilitate its image in the wake of September 11 without carrying out genuine reforms. The kingdom has embarked on a multimillion-dollar public relations campaign in America.

Speakers at the symposium included America’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Robert Jordan; a former Republican nominee for vice president, Jack Kemp, and prominent Arab business leaders. The event was opened by Geoff Colvin, Fortune magazine’s editorial director, and by Prince Bandar bin Khalid Al Faisal, the son of Prince Khalid Al-Faisal, the governor of Saudi Arabia’s Asir region.

The editor of the Saudi-based Arab News, a newspaper that has published a cartoon of President Bush morphing into Hitler and also published disparaging remarks about Jews, Khaled Al-Maeena, was a speaker. He defended his newspaper’s publishing of a recent article that referred to the “subhuman Zionist lobby.”

“The Zionist lobby is a lobby that is working against the interest of peace in the Middle East. It is working against the interests of Israel and against the interests of Palestinians,” Mr. Al-Maeena told The New York Sun. “The Zionist lobby is negating all the good characteristics of the Israeli people.”

When the Sun asked if that makes them “subhuman,” he said: “as a human being, your interests should be peace and prosperity in Israel and in all the lands…I believe there should be peace in the Middle East, but to go on and create problems and trouble is really upsetting me…Israel was made so that the Jews would live in peace. Jews everywhere around the world are living in peace except in Israel.”

The ambassador from the League of Arab States to America, Hussein Hassouna, was part of a panel discussing the “impact of the U.S. administration’s strategy on business and relationships” but he used the opportunity to blast America and Israel. He criticized America for not paying its U.N. dues and for refusing to accept international conventions such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Criminal Court.

“If the United States is trying to uphold the principles of dignity, justice, fairness, this should be universal, because there shouldn’t be double standards. Sometimes we feel that people like the Palestinians who are seeking the freedom and ending of occupation are not treated the same way as other people,” Mr. Hassouna said.

He also called on Israel to disarm.

“There can be no double standard. If you want to get rid of weapons, you get rid of all of them. We realize that Israel is the only country in the Middle East which has not adhered to the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” he said.

A senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Anthony Cordesman, said: “The United States really does have a dual standard. I’ve never understood how career diplomats can say that we do not, with a straight face, but it is a triumph of American diplomacy that they can do so.”

Mr. Cordesman praised the Saudi crown prince, Abdullah, the kingdom’s de facto leader, for his Middle East peace plan, released in March, comparing Prince Abdullah to the late Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat. “Now, we need such leadership from Europe, the United States and Israel,” Mr. Cordesman said.

Mr. Kemp, who now serves as co-director of the conservative group Empower America, spoke on a panel about the “challenges of interdependence.” During the discussion, he said that he hopes Saddam Hussein will accept the new U.N. Security Council resolution, and that if Saddam complies, the trade embargo against Iraq should be ended.

“We ought to tell him that the incentive for him to disarm would be lifting the embargo,” Mr. Kemp said. When asked by the Sun about his views on the Arab Thought Foundation, he said: “I don’t know much about it. I was here because of Fortune.”

Former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross, who spoke on the panel with Mr. Kemp, said: “I don’t know that much about the Arab Thought Foundation, but if they’re going to sponsor a forum like this with Fortune magazine, it can’t be a bad thing.”

A spokeswoman for the Arab Thought Foundation, Maggie Mitchell, said the think tank “is not an opportunity for the Saudis to advance themselves. This is genuinely an opportunity for Arabs to have dialogue…” Ms. Mitchell dismissed the criticism of the group being a Saudi front by noting that more than half of the foundation’s founders and directors are from countries outside Saudi Arabia such as Syria, Egypt, and Algeria.

The Arab symposium lost two key speakers in the week leading up to the conference. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice withdrew and her office offered no reason for the cancellation. And Ehud Barak, Israel’s former prime minister, was to be interviewed but withdrew at the last minute. Conference organizers said his cancellation was due to a scheduling conflict. No Israeli officials or government representatives were present at the symposium, although the Washington correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz was on a panel. Mr. Barak is scheduled to speak today on another panel at the Fortune Global Forum.

-- Anonymous, November 11, 2002