WASHINGTON, Feb 28 (AP): The Obama administration said Friday that the United States will boycott an upcoming UN conference on racism unless its final document is changed to drop all references to Israel and the defamation of religion.
At the same time, it said the US would participate as an observer in meetings of the UN Human Rights Council, a body that was shunned by the Bush administration for anti-Israel statements and failing to act on abuses in Sudan and other states.
The racism conference is a follow-up to the contentious 2001 meeting in the South African city of Durban that was dominated by clashes over the Middle East and the legacy of slavery.
The US and Israel walked out midway through that meeting over a draft resolution that singled out Israel for criticism and likened Zionism - the movement to establish and maintain a Jewish state - to racism.
Israel and Canada had already announced they would will boycott the next World Conference Against Racism in Geneva from April 20-25, known as Durban II, but the Obama administration decided it wanted to assess the negotiations before making a decision on US participation.
Last week, the State Department sent a team to Geneva to attend preparatory meetings for the conference but Friday it said the closing statement under consideration mirrored the 2001 draft and was was unacceptable.
"Sadly ... the document being negotiated has gone from bad to worse, and the current text of the draft outcome document is not salvageable," spokesman Robert Wood said in a statement.
"As a result, the United States will not engage in further negotiations on this text, nor will we participate in a conference based on this text," he said.
The United States will not take part in the conference unless its final statement does not single out any one country or conflict for criticism nor embrace the draft's stance on the condemnation or take up the issue of reparations for slavery, Wood said.
"We would be prepared to re-engage if a document that meets these criteria becomes the basis for deliberations," he said.
