The Sept. 11 terrorist hijackings pushed the United Nations' World Conference against Racism off the front pages, but many national and international commentators were discussing the conference well after it ended Sept. 7. (Keeping Current).

The Sept. 11 terrorist hijackings pushed the United Nations' World Conference against Racism off the front pages, but many national and international commentators were discussing the conference well after it ended Sept. 7. K.P. Waran writes in the Sept. 10 edition of the New Straits Times, a dally published in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell should not have pulled his delegation out of the conference to protest criticism of Israel. As a black man who has had to confront racism in America, Powell should have made a better showing, Waran writes. "He decided to rely on the cop-out precedent set by others who had little interest in such issues. ... By withdrawing the U.S. delegation from the racism conference, Washington seems to ignore the greater need to create a united world." A Sept. 13 editorial in The Hindu newspaper from Chennai, India, writes that the "untouchables," or Dalits, were big winners at the conference. The Dalits are 240 million Indians at the bottom of the cou ntry's caste system. The editorial reports that U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan invited one member of the organization to address 12 presidents and world leaders at the conference. The "tiniest African country, indigenous people from New Zealand and South America, and obscure little European kingdoms have listened in horror to the tales of what we do to our Dalits," the editorial notes.