PARIS, Jan 13: Haitham Manna, spokesman of the Paris-based Arab Committee for Human Rights, has condemned France for “acting under US pressure” in its decision to refuse visas to representatives of 13 Saudi charity organisations who were to take part last week in Paris in an international conference for humanitarian organizations.

Speaking by teleconference from Paris during a packed press conference on Sunday in Riyadh, Mr Manna not only said that as far as he was concerned France was “obviously acting under US pressure” in refusing to accord the visas.

“Also,” he noted, “in cautioning France to think twice about repeating such acts in the future, it was obvious to him that the US is exporting a new form of McCarthyism to Europe,” in reference to the Cold War-era witch hunts of a half-century ago that saw Communist “sympathizers” and such personalities as actor-director Charlie Chaplin forced to go into exile because of their ideas, often to find the same US-inspired intellectual terror tactics exercised against them in their new countries where the US was often able, as often today, to wield a heavy hand.

Also speaking before the news conference, the Secretary-General of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, Dr. Saleh Al-Wohaibi said, for his part, that it was “unacceptable” that the French Embassy in Riyadh refuse the visas, and affirmed that “he hoped that the embassy would not repeat such a mistake in the future.”

He also noted that the visas were denied by the French Embassy “without any explanation.”

Dr Saleh Al-Wohaibi described the Paris-based conference as being a major international meeting of humanitarian organizations from around the world that this year brought together 220 participants representing 51 humanitarian organizations from 65 countries. The delegates, he said, included Muslims, Christians, Hindus and other faiths.