Nobel prize laureate Elie Wiesel warns xenophobia still a problem in Europe

Racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism still plague many European countries, Nobel prize laureate Elie Wiesel said Thursday in a video message to a meeting of Europe's main security body that focuses on intolerance and discrimination.

Wiesel, a Romanian-born Holocaust survivor, said he wanted to "warn against the existence of racist and anti-Semitic groups carrying out public activities" in several European countries, without naming any.

"Anti-Semitism is the oldest form of hatred in history and is the only one of the serious illnesses of the 20th century which has survived and is still around, with communism and Nazism mostly gone now," he said, adding that the Nazis' access to power was the determinant factor that led to the Holocaust.

An international human rights group warned Wednesday in a report published before the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe conference that hate crimes are on the rise in many countries, urging governments to do more to combat violent discrimination.

The groups facing threats of discriminatory violence "include Jews and Muslims, who confront virulent combinations of racism and religious intolerance, the Roma and Sinti, and minority Christian faiths in Russia, Turkey, and the Central Asian republics," the report said.

The OSCE's Human Rights Office said in a statement that a trend had emerged in recent years "in many OSCE countries, of retreat from multicultural policies founded on the principles of diversity, in favor of policies and measures that restrict religious or cultural expression."

Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, the OSCE's chairman, said intolerance and discrimination threaten global security and called on the international community to strengthen efforts "to promote freedom of thought, conscience, religion and belief."

He added that the OSCE was working to prevent racism and discrimination against Roma and Sinti and improving their access to social and medical services.

Israel's representative Itzhak Herzog said "anti-Semitism sometimes mixes with anti-Israelism, with both often sharing a subtext of hate against Jews." He warned against a recent rise in anti-Semitism in Latin America, which he blamed on new regimes and their cooperation with Iran, referring to Venezuela.

The U.S. ambassador to the OSCE, Julie Finley ,made an imperative call on member states to act against anti-Semitism, saying the tools created for this would also work to fight other intolerance. "Let's focus only on anti-Semitism. The others will take care of themselves," she said.

U.S. Rep. Eric I. Cantor, a Virginia Republican, urged countries to confront anti-Semitism through education.

He also praised recent efforts by Romania to confront its past as an ally of Nazi Germany during 1941-44 by erecting a monument to commemorate Holocaust victims.

"We need to talk about things that are uncomfortable," he told The Associated Press in an interview. "We need to learn from the past," he said, adding that centuries of anti-Semitism culminated with the Holocaust.

An international panel led by Wiesel concluded that the wartime Romanian government led by Marshal Ion Antonescu was responsible for the deaths of 280,000-380,000 Jews and more than 11,000 Gypsies, or Roma.