The administration of US President Barack Obama said late on Saturday it would participate in planning for a UN conference on racism despite concerns the meeting will be used by Arab nations and others to criticize Israel.
The US will decide later whether to participate in the conference.
The State Department said it would send diplomats next week to participate in preparatory meetings for the World Conference Against Racism, which is set to be held in Geneva, Switzerland, in April and which some countries including Israel have already decided to boycott.
During the administration of former US president George W. Bush, the US and Israel walked out of the first UN conference on racism in Durban, South Africa, in 2001 over efforts to pass a resolution comparing Zionism — the movement to establish and maintain a Jewish state — to racism.
Those efforts failed, but there are signs the resolution may be reintroduced at the so-called “Durban 2” meeting in Geneva and Israel has been actively lobbying the US and European countries to stay away from this year’s meeting.
In a statement released late on Saturday, the State Department said the US delegation to the planning sessions would review “current direction of conference preparations and whether US participation in the conference itself is warranted.”
“This will be the first opportunity the [Obama] administration has had to engage in the negotiations for the Durban Review, and — in line with our commitment to diplomacy — the US has decided to send a delegation to engage in the negotiations on the text of the conference document,” the department said.
“The intent of our participation is to work to try to change the direction in which the review conference is heading,” it said.
“We hope to work with other countries that want the Conference to responsibly and productively address racism around the world,” the statement said.
The statement stressed that US attendance at the planning meetings “does not indicate — and should not be misconstrued to indicate — that the United States will participate in April in the World Conference Against Racism itself.”
“Nor does it indicate that we will necessarily participate in future preparations for the conference,” it said. “These decisions will be taken at a later date, depending on the results that we see from the negotiating process.”
Israel, which announced in November that it would boycott the conference, has been pressing the new Obama foreign policy team to stay away from the meeting, US officials said.
The Bush administration had left a decision on whether to attend to the next administration, but voted in the UN General Assembly last year to protest the conference.
Canada has already said it will not participate, maintaining the meeting will promote racism and not combat it.
Nauru has started selling passports to fund climate action, but is so far struggling to attract new citizens to the low-lying, largely barren island in the Pacific Ocean. Nauru, one of the world’s smallest nations, has a novel plan to fund its fight against climate change by selling so-called “Golden Passports.” Selling for US$105,000 each, Nauru plans to drum up more than US$5 million in the first year of the “climate resilience citizenship” program. Almost six months after the scheme opened in February, Nauru has so far approved just six applications — covering two families and four individuals. Despite the slow start —
MOGAMI-CLASS FRIGATES: The deal is a ‘big step toward elevating national security cooperation with Australia, which is our special strategic partner,’ a Japanese official said Australia is to upgrade its navy with 11 Mogami-class frigates built by Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles said yesterday. Billed as Japan’s biggest defense export deal since World War II, Australia is to pay US$6 billion over the next 10 years to acquire the fleet of stealth frigates. Australia is in the midst of a major military restructure, bolstering its navy with long-range firepower in an effort to deter China. It is striving to expand its fleet of major warships from 11 to 26 over the next decade. “This is clearly the biggest defense-industry agreement that has ever
North Korean troops have started removing propaganda loudspeakers used to blare unsettling noises along the border, South Korea’s military said on Saturday, days after Seoul’s new administration dismantled ones on its side of the frontier. The two countries had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who is seeking to ease tensions with Pyongyang. The South Korean Ministry of National Defense on Monday last week said it had begun removing loudspeakers from its side of the border as “a practical measure aimed at helping ease
DEADLY TASTE TEST: Erin Patterson tried to kill her estranged husband three times, police said in one of the major claims not heard during her initial trial Australia’s recently convicted mushroom murderer also tried to poison her husband with bolognese pasta and chicken korma curry, according to testimony aired yesterday after a suppression order lapsed. Home cook Erin Patterson was found guilty last month of murdering her husband’s parents and elderly aunt in 2023, lacing their beef Wellington lunch with lethal death cap mushrooms. A series of potentially damning allegations about Patterson’s behavior in the lead-up to the meal were withheld from the jury to give the mother-of-two a fair trial. Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale yesterday rejected an application to keep these allegations secret. Patterson tried to kill her
RSS