STORRS, Conn. (AP) — The Israeli-Palestinian dispute has spilled over into a conference at the University of Connecticut as four of five speakers canceled, with one refusing to attend because the event honored Israeli President Shimon Peres.
The Hartford Courant (http://cour.at/UxBtRZ ) reports that Maryam al-Khawaja, a human rights activist who was to represent her father, Abdulhadi al-Khawaja of Bahrain, pulled out of the UNESCO Chair and Institute of Comparative Human Rights Conference. She accused Peres of unspecified human rights violations.
The elder al-Khawaja is in prison and was to be honored for human rights work.
The event continued Tuesday. The only speaker scheduled was Peres' son-in-law and personal physician, Raphael Walden, a vascular surgeon who was chief of surgery at Sheba Medical Center and a visiting professor at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
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Information from: The Hartford Courant, http://www.courant.com
