Source: http://www.ec4i.org/content/view/64/53/ http://www.ec4i.org/content/view/64/53/
Date: March 2, 2009

ECI welcomes US administration’s decision to withdraw from Durban II 

Calls on the EU to work in partnership with the US in global fight against racism
Brussels  2 March 2009 – European Coalition for Israel welcomes the decision of the new US administration to withdraw from the Durban II conference unless significant changes to, what the State Department called “unsalvageable anti-Israeli resolutions”, are made. 
Several European Heads of States, including French president Nicolas Sarkozy, have warned that they will boycott the UN conference on Racism unless they are given guarantees that it will not be a repeat of the first UN World Conference against Racism in Durban in 2001 where Zionism was compared to racism and where a parallel NGO conference went overboard with direct anti-Semitic slur. Canada and Israel have already decided to boycott the conference in April. 
Last week the new US administration sent two representatives to Geneva where the final document is being negotiated. The delegation’s conclusions were that the anti-Israeli and anti-Western tendencies were too deeply entrenched to excise. The preparatory work of the document has been lead by Libya and included countries like Iran and Cuba. The committee has repeatedly rejected a European Union condemnation of Holocaust denial and has called for a ban on defamation of religion. 
The European Coalition for Israel calls on the European Union not to lend its good name to a conference which will in fact further trivialize the important issues of racism and xenophobia by taking a one sided view on the conflict in the Middle East and by ignoring to address crucial human rights issues, such as the situation for Dalits, Roma, ethnic cleansing in various parts of the world and the rise of anti-Semitism. 
“- It is regrettable that a UN conference that should highlight severe expressions of racism in the world instead is being manipulated to hide these very same concerns”, said ECI director Tomas Sandell on Monday. 
He continued “ -This provides a unique opportunity for the European Union to find common ground with the new US administration in an effort to strengthen the work for democracy and human rights in the world by not letting an important international convention on racism be hijacked by Jew hatred and anti-democratic sentiments.” 
The European Coalition for Israel will meet this week with senior European Commission officials in Brussels to raise their concerns about the UN conference and urge the EU to withdraw. Shortly thereafter a delegation from the ECI is scheduled to meet the current Czech EU-presidency in Prague to repeat the call for an EU boycott of the Durban II conference.