US boycotting, Iran starring at UN racism meeting

The United Nations opens its first global racism conference in eight years on Monday with the U.S. and at least five other countries boycotting the event out of concern that Islamic countries will demand that it denounces Israel and bans criticism of Islam.

The administration of President Barack Obama, America’s first black head of state, announced Saturday that it would boycott “with regret” the weeklong meeting in Geneva, which already is experiencing much of the bickering and political infighting that marred the 2001 conference in Durban, South Africa.

The Netherlands declared its boycott Sunday, while Australia, Canada, Israel and Italy already have said they would not attend.

“I would love to be involved in a useful conference that addressed continuing issues of racism and discrimination around the globe,” Obama said in Trinidad on Sunday after attending the Summit of the Americas.

But he said the language of the U.N.’s draft declaration “raised a whole set of objectionable provisions” and risked a reprise of Durban, “which became a session through which folks expressed antagonism toward Israel in ways that were often times completely hypocritical and counterproductive.”

“We expressed in the run-up to this conference our concerns that if you adopted all of the language from 2001, that’s not something we can sign up for,” Obama said. “Our participation would have involved putting our imprimatur on something we just didn’t believe in.”