U.S. to Boycott UN's Durban III Conference

Bloomberg reports:

The U.S. has announced it won’t attend the 10-year commemoration of a global UN conference on combating racism because past meetings have included “ugly displays of intolerance and anti-Semitism.”

The Obama administration made the announcement in a letter from Acting Assistant Secretary of State Joseph Macmanus to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York. The UN World Conference Against Racism will be held in New York on September 21st.

The U.S. and more than a half dozen other nations -- including Israel, Canada, Italy, Sweden -- boycotted the UN conference on combating racism held in Geneva in April 2009 because of the prospective treatment of Israel.

In a speech there, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Israel a “repressive, racist regime,” sparking a walkout by European delegates at the conference.

Macmanus said that the U.S. voted against the United Nations resolution establishing the 2011 event because the so- called Durban process “included ugly displays of intolerance and anti-Semitism and we did not want to see that commemorated.”

The 2001 UN conference against racism took place in Durban, South Africa, and focused in large part on Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Delegates produced a draft resolution that equated Zionism with racism.