Israeli Controversy Dogs Organizer Wiesel : 75 Nobel Laureates Discuss World Problems in Paris

President Francois Mitterrand of France opened an unprecedented conference of 75 Nobel laureates in Paris on Monday to discuss some of the intractable problems of a century that has produced what he called “barbarism in the midst of progress.”

As the four days of meetings began, one of the most dramatic and violent of the problems--the Israeli repression of Palestinian demonstrations in the occupied territories--continued to dog the organizer of the conference, American Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel.

Wiesel, a Jewish survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp who lived in France for many years, has been criticized sharply in France for refusing to rebuke Israel for its handling of the Palestinian demonstrations. In reply, Wiesel has insisted, with tones of anguish, “I do not know what Israel should do.”

Addressing his fellow Nobel laureates in the ornate Salle des Fetes (reception hall) of the presidential palace, the 59-year-old Wiesel, who was born in Romania, brought up the Israeli-Palestinian problem that he has been unable to avoid in pre-conference interviews for more than a week.

Desperate Children

“How do you reconcile the anguish of some people to the need for identity of others?” he said in French. “Of the frustrated and desperate children fighting with stones and burning tires and of the other children, hardly older, trying to prevent them? When will they understand that, to live together in reciprocal dignity, they must surpass each other in drawing from their past not only fear and mistrust but fraternity and faith as well?”

Aside from Wiesel, the best-known Nobel laureates at the conference were former U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973; former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971; British novelist William Golding, who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1983; and Nigerian playwright and novelist Wole Soyinka, who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1986.

The conference, which Wiesel said evolved from a conversation that he had with Mitterrand two years ago, seems steeped in a traditional French belief that intellectuals can help politicians deal with the issues of the day.

Meeting behind closed doors in the presidential palace, the Nobel laureates, most of them physicists, chemists, and doctors, will break up into small groups and take up matters under five categories: disarmament and peace, human rights, economic development, science and technology and culture and society.

It is not clear what they are expected to conclude. But Wiesel, talking with American and British reporters a few days ago, said Nobel Prize winners have so much prestige that they can often bring attention to little-noticed problems. He said that years ago, before he won the prize, he had difficulty generating publicity for the plight of refugees along the Cambodian border.

“If we had a committee of 10 Nobel Prize winners then,” he said, “they could have accomplished in 10 minutes what it took us two weeks.”

Mitterrand, describing a 20th Century of great contradictions--”of Auschwitz and penicillin, of the Green Revolution and the Brown Shirts”--called for “confident collaboration between scientists and politicians” in meeting “the promise and threat of the 21st Century.”

The unusual conference is expected to add to the prestige of Mitterrand, who has not yet announced whether he will be a candidate for reelection in the April 24 balloting for president. Trying to fathom the intentions of the president has become a fashionable guessing game in France.

Wiesel, with a smile, alluded to this situation in his speech to the other laureates by promising that “we will try to solve all problems except the one about whether or not the president will run again.”

On Sunday, in a dramatic trip, Wiesel and several other Nobel laureates flew to Poland to visit the Auschwitz camp. Lech Walesa, the leader of the illegal Solidarity trade union in Poland and winner of the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize, joined them in a tour of the camp. Wiesel’s mother and sister were killed in the camp’s gas chambers, and his father starved to death in the camp.

Walesa, fearing that he would not be allowed to return to Poland, had declined the invitation to the conference in Paris.

Wiesel also described Soviet dissident Andrei D. Sakharov, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975, as “an involuntary absentee.” He said that “it is too bad that Dr. Sakharov’s new friend, Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev, does not realize” that the dissident’s “presence in this room would surely contribute to the elevation of our discussions and debates.”

Wiesel also said that former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978, and exiled Soviet novelist Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn, who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1970, had declined for reasons of health.

In the days leading up to the conference, the controversy over Wiesel and Israel seemed to overshadow the conference itself.

In an interview with the International Herald Tribune, Wiesel said that although “it hurts terribly” to see television footage of Israeli soldiers battling children, “I don’t know what Israel should do.” On top of this, he said that the Israeli conflict was not as bad as the French war in Algeria and the British dominance of their colonies and therefore “Israel does not have to take lessons from anyone.”

Although several Arab representatives attacked Wiesel for these views, the most stinging criticism came from Jean Daniel, the editor of the leftist magazine Nouvel Observateur. Daniel is both a Jew and a longtime admirer of Wiesel.

Daniel said Wiesel’s argument smacked of the argument used by lawyer Jacques Verges in his vain defense of local Nazi Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie in his trial in Lyon last year for crimes against humanity, mainly involving the deportation of French Jews to extermination camps. Verges had insisted that France had no right to judge Barbie because of its killing of Arab nationalists during the Algerian war.