What progress?

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At the 1905-1907 Campbell-Bannerman conference, named after the British prime minister who convened it, experts from Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Italy contemplated the threats facing Western civilisation and concluded that the most pressing came from the south-east of the Mediterranean.

In their final report they argued that the Mediterranean was colonialism's vital artery, linking the West with its colonies in Asia and Africa. Yet on the south-eastern shores of the Mediterranean was a nation united in history, religion and tongue. If it was not to threaten Western colonialism it must be kept weak, divided and ignorant.

Campbell-Bannerman's experts saw a world divided into three blocs. The first, entitled to material and technical superiority, was made up of the Christian nations of Europe, North America and Australia. A second bloc, dwelling on the peripheries of Western civilisation and including Latin America, Japan, and Korea, must be contained and pacified. The third bloc -- Arabs and Muslims -- was to be deprived of the fruits of technology and modern science.

In a recommendation illustrating the early symbiosis between imperialism and Zionist ideas, the Campbell-Bannerman report suggested establishing a state in Palestine, echoing the views of the 1897 Zionist Congress in Basel and endorsing the idea, first suggested by Theodor Herzl, of creating a strong, Western- leaning country in the Middle East.

Fast forward a century. At the conclusion of the recent Alliance of Civilisations Forum, UN representative Jorge Sampaio said that the forum offered a "glimmer of hope" for a changed world. So far so good, but then at the second anti-apartheid conference in Geneva Western countries fought nail and tooth against any criticism of Israel. Some even argued that any such criticism constitutes anti-Semitism.

Having failed to remove any criticism of Israel from the conference the US and several Western nations threatened a boycott. Israel started rebuking the Swiss president for meeting his Iranian counterpart. Then the ambassadors of 23 European countries walked out of the conference in protest against Ahmadinejad's comments. So how far have we come since the 1907 conference?