Young

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Taylor is reaching out to community leaders to apologise for remarks his campaign co-chairman Andrew Young made about Jews, Koreans and Arabs.

The comments forced Young's resignation from Wal-Mart, last week, as the company's image-builder.

"Mark Taylor called me today and was sorry," Sherry Frank, executive director of the Atlanta Jewish Committee told Tuesday's Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "Mark was expressing his concern for anything that was hurtful to the Jewish community."

Taylor's campaign said on Friday that there were no plans for Young, a United States civil rights leader, former United Nations ambassador and Atlanta mayor, to step down as campaign co-chairman.

Taylor said he found Young's comments "regrettable."

The former Atlanta mayor and United Nations ambassador stepped down from his position as head of Working Families for Wal-Mart on Thursday, amid criticism for comments he made to a newspaper that were seen as racially offensive.

Well-known figure

Young, a well-known figure in Jamaica with whom former Prime Minister P.J. Patterson has a close relationship, was hired by Wal-Mart in February to help improve its image.

"I think I was on the verge of becoming part of the controversy and I didn't want to become a distraction from the main issues, so I thought I ought to step down," Young told The Associated Press.

Patterson was, this year, made a senior adviser to Young's consulting firm GoodWorks International.

That relationship stirred up controversy in Jamaica, with ethical questions raised by the opposition, given Young's former business dealings with Jamaica while Patterson was in office.

The former Atlanta mayor, once a close associate of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., said he made his decision to give up the Wal-Mart position after a report was published in the Los Angeles Sentinel, which he said was misread and misinterpreted.

In the Sentinel interview, Young was asked whether he was concerned that Wal-Mart causes smaller mom-and-pop stores to close.

"Well, I think they should; they ran the 'mom and pop' stores out of my neighbourhood," the paper quoted Young as saying.

Ripped off communities

"But you see, those are the people who have been overcharging us, selling us stale bread and bad meat, and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they've ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it's Arabs; very few black people own these stores."

Young, who has apologised for the remarks, said he decided to end his involvement with Working Families for Wal-Mart after he started getting calls about the story.

"Things that are matter-of-fact in Atlanta, in the New York and Los Angeles environment, tend to be a lot more volatile," he said.

Young came under fire from the civil rights community after GoodWorks was hired by Working Families for Wal-Mart to promote the world's largest retailer.

Young's company, which he has headed since 1997, works with corporations and governments to foster economic development in Africa and the Caribbean.

In an April letter to the General Synod of the United Church of Christ, Young said it was wrong for the church and others to blame Wal-Mart for world ills.

"I think we may have erred in not paying enough attention to the potentially positive role of business and the corporate multinational community in seeking solutions to the problems of the poor," Young wrote at that time.