U.S. won't attend Durban 2 summit on racism
By Shlomo Shamir
February 27, 2009
Haaretz
Original Source: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1067506.html

The United States will not attend a United Nations conference on racism that critics say will be a forum to criticize Israel, and will no longer participate in planning sessions for it, a senior UN source told Haaretz on Friday. 

The decision to drop U.S. involvement comes one day before U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leaves on her first trip to the Middle East in her new capacity, including stops in Israel.

A U.S. delegation took part in negotiations this month on the World Conference Against Racism, scheduled for April in Geneva, Switzerland, although Israel has called for a boycott and Canada has said it will not attend.

Referring to the content of the draft resolutions, the source said that during negotiations a bad document became worse, prompting the U.S. to end its affiliation with the conference, dubbed Durban 2. 

The U.S. decided the final document that will be produced by the conference is not salvageable, another official said.

Critics of the April conference, say Arab nations will use it as a forum to bash Israel and charge that the draft document will limit freedom of religion and speech.

Last week, Haaretz learned that the draft resolutions for the conference branded Israel as an occupying state that carries out racist policies. They refer to the plight of Palestinian refugees and other inhabitants of the Arab occupied territories, apparently meaning Israel itself. 

The senior UN source told Haaretz that the U.S. ended its contact with the nations that drafted the resolutions, which will be voted on during the summit. The Americans did not want a draft resolution reiterating the decisions of the first Durban summit, held in 2001, to be brought to a vote, the source said. 

They also insisted that no country would be specifically mentioned by name in any resolution and even objected to an initiative by Muslim countries to ratify a law banning criticism of any religion in the media, the source added. 

The 2001 World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Durban was meant to lay down a blueprint for nations to address sensitive issues. 

Israel and the United States walked out in protest over a draft text branding Israel as a racist and apartheid state, language that was later dropped.

The State Department was expected to announce the decision not to participate in the conference later on Friday.