The United States has clarified its stance and stated firmly that unless there are substantial changes in the conference document, America will not attend next week's United Nations "Durban II" racism conference.
"There needs to be a viable text that... must not reaffirm in toto the 2001 Durban Declaration and Program of Action," U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Wood told reporters on Wednesday.
"We have some concerns in the text about references that support restrictions on freedom of expression. At this moment, we have not seen enough progress. Although the document has come a long way, we're not there yet," Wood added.
Concern in the Israeli sector over the text, meanwhile, is growing. Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Roni Leshno Ya'ar, said in an interview published Thursday in The Jerusalem Post, "The new text is not an improvement. If anything, it is worse than the previous text because it includes a reference to foreign occupation, which in the diplomatic world is code for Israel."
The 17-page document issued on Wednesday reaffirms the resolutions of the first World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, which was held in Durban, South Africa in August 2001.
An unnamed rights activist quoted by Haaretz said that the new text has dropped all overt references to Israel, as well as the reference to "defamation of religion" insisted on by Islamic nations.
United Nations officials were hoping the changes would be enough to draw the United States back to the conference, as well as the other Western nations that have vowed to boycott the gathering.
Canada was the first Western nation to announce it would not attend the conference, followed by Israel, Italy and the United States. Australia announced that unless the text of the Durban II document was significantly changed before the conference began, it, too would avoid the gathering.
A U.N. spokeswoman promised on Wednesday "Definitely we will not allow what happened in Durban to happen here." Marie Heuze, head of public information at the U.N. European headquarters in Geneva, told a reporter, "While respecting freedom of speech, within the precincts of the United Nations we will be vigilant to prevent hate speech, verbal abuse and insults against people of different races and creeds."
Parallel Process in Geneva
Amos Herman, chairman of the Jewish Agency's Task Force Against Anti-Semitism and head of the agency's Education Committee, told Israel National News on Thursday that he is pessimistic about the chances that the conference will accomplish its stated goals.
Herman said while the newly modified revisions in the Durban II document do not outwardly condemn Israel for its policies towards Palestinian Authority Arabs, he feels that the incrimination is implicit, albeit masked in a diplomatic smoke screen.
“The wording was carefully chosen so as not to turn off European diplomats who would otherwise not attend the event,” Herman said.
“Specifically the NGOs were the ones that espoused anti-Israel and anti-Semitic slogans like ‘Zionism equals Racism’, and ‘Israel is an Apartheid State’”, said Herman, who expects a repeat performance at Durban II.
“We intend to take to the streets. We decided not to give up against the possibly most anti-Semitic event of the year,” Herman said, explaining that hundreds of students among at least 1000 participants under the Jewish Agency’s umbrella will show their support for the State of Israel, and bring representatives of minority communities in Israel to show Israel’s humanitarian track record.
Herman explained that out of the 1,000 delegates in the alternative plenum, half are Jews from Europe and the United States, and the other half are non-Jewish supporters of Israel.
"Nothing good will come out of the conference," he said, "which will apparently gather to ratify the statements made at Durban I. With 'gentlemen' like [Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Abu Minyar] Gaddafi and [Iran’s President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad confirming their participation, the conference is bound to be anti-Zionist, if not anti-Jewish,” he said.
Herman will represent the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency for Israel at a parallel event opposite the United Nations Headquarters in Geneva concurrently with the conference, which begins April 21.
He added that Libya, Iran and Cuba are expected to claim that discrimination, racism and apartheid are to be found mainly in the Middle East, and particularly in Israel.
“We’re presenting an alternative conference opposite the event in order to draw the international media towards us.” Herman said that the Jewish Agency, acting as a steering committee together with the U.N. Watch, which conceived the idea, will “show that Israel is not the cause of the problem of the oppression of the Tutsis, Iranian opposition, and citizens’ rights in Libya.”