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The APA Board of Trustees has voted against collaborating with the the Arab Federation of Psychiatrists and the World Psychiatric Association on a meeting in Beirut, Lebanon.
A vote in June in favor of collaborating in the meeting was declared "null and void" by APA President Herbert Sacks, M.D., at the Board’s September 15-16 meeting in Washington, D.C., necessitating a new debate and vote on the matter. The Beirut meeting is scheduled to take place in April 1998.
Passport Validation
Sacks explained his action by pointing out that at the time the June vote was taken, Board members were unaware that Lebanon was on the State Department’s list of countries for which Americans need special passport validation from the U.S. State Department prior to a visit because of the potential for being targets of terrorism or other violence. Without such approval travelers could be subject to fines or imprisonment.
(In late July Secretary of State Madeline Albright loosened the restrictions on travel to Lebanon, moving it to the roster of countries Americans are urged to avoid because of the possibility of violence, but to which they are permitted to travel without the threat of federal sanctions.)
Sacks’s invalidation of the previous vote opened the door for the Trustees to revisit the issue of lending APA’s support with no commitment of APA funds to the meeting, which they had backed by a 16-to-3 vote at their June meeting.
Discrimination
Once the issue was back before the Trustees, much of the debate focused on whether the meeting would be open to every psychiatrist who chose to attend or whether Lebanese political considerations would bar Israeli or other Jewish psychiatrists from participating. Most of the Board members who spoke registered strong opposition to lending APA’s imprimatur to a meeting that places barriers in the way of these psychiatrists.
When the Board endorsed APA’s participation in June, it came with the proviso that the meeting’s organizers would supply APA with written verification that the gathering would be open to any psychiatrist who wanted to attend. When the president of the Arab Federation of Psychiatrists responded to APA’s verification request in a July 1 letter, he indicated that there is "no discrimination whatsoever" governing who can attend the meeting, but that Jewish participants or attendees will be expected to arrive in Lebanon on European, not Israeli, passports "as there is yet no consular representation of Lebanon with Israel."
"Their answer to our question is obviously ‘no’," said APA Secretary Paul Appelbaum, M.D., at the most recent Board meeting, "every psychiatrist is not eligible to attend."
Former APA president Lawrence Hartmann, M.D., urged his colleagues, however, not to lose sight of the "worthy goal" of increasing the level of collaboration between American and Arab psychiatrists. Even if it takes several years to plan, he suggested, APA should work toward collaborating on a meeting with psychiatrists "in a part of the world we often ignore."
With the Trustees’ sentiment clearly tilting in favor of declining to collaborate on the Beirut meeting, Vice President Alan Tasman, M.D., cautioned his colleagues to be careful to not make their deliberations appear as if they were rejecting the opportunity for cooperation because of the ethnic background of the Arab psychiatrists. A similar sentiment was expressed by former president Mary Jane England, M.D., the Board’s liaison to the Council on International Affairs, who pointed out as well that Lebanon is not alone in barring travelers from certain countries - in fact, the U.S. government also prohibits travel access to this country for citizens of several nations including Iraq, Cuba, Iran, and Libya.
While the Board members were divided on whether they opposed APA involvement in the meeting primarily because of restrictive access policies or out of concerns for the safety of psychiatrists attending the meeting, their final vote was clearly in favor of declining the invitation of the Arab psychiatrists to collaborate on the Beirut meeting.