4-21-09, 8:41 am

BEIJING, April 20 (Xinhua) -- A major United Nations anti-racism conference opened Monday in Geneva despite a boycott from the United States and several western countries owing to concern over a possible criticism on Israel.

Analysts said the Western walkout reminded the world of the unhealable political rifts between the Western and Islamic nations.

Western Pullout

The Netherlands, Germany and New Zealand announced their boycotts Sunday, following Australia, Canada, Israel and Italy which had said they would not attend the weeklong session slated for April 20-25.

The U.S. State Department announced Saturday that the U.S. would not attend the UN conference on racism due to the wording of its final document that could possibly arouse criticism against Israel.

The pullout of Germany is considered significant as the country has played a leading role in U.N. anti-racism efforts as a result of its troubled historical legacy. It is also the first time in decades that Germany has missed a major UN conference.

A Durban II?

The five-day Durban Review Conference, held in Durban of South Africa in 2001, was aimed to evaluate progress toward the goals set by the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.

The United States and Israel walked out 2001 session owing to attempts to liken Zionism to racism when a parallel NGO forum equated Israel's policies in the occupied territories with apartheid in its strongly worded final declaration. Although the UN Commission on Human Rights dropped the reference in the main forum, concerns about anti-Semitism remained in the final text.

The 2001 session was later nicknamed as Durban I, during which activist groups staged anti-semitic marches and protests.

Will the Geneva conference be a replay of Durban I, namely Durban II? Concern is high that the meeting may descend to another bickering and onslaught against Israel.

Hillel Neuer, head of UN Watch, a group that monitors the world body for perceived bias against Jews and Israel, described the Durban meeting as a 'festival of hate and anti-Semitism' and predicted the Geneva session would be just as bad.

Plans to reaffirm the 2001 document were of particular concern to the Barack Obama administration.

On Feb. 27, the U.S. announced that it would not participate in further planning talks or the conference itself unless changes were made. Before announcing its boycott, the U.S. had been pressing its European allies to lobby for an acceptable document.

Western countries were fiercely opposed to parts of early drafts for a Geneva declaration that suggested Israel was driven by racism in its treatment of Palestinians, and included proposals to bar 'defamation of religion.'

But the latest version of the draft issued on Wednesday showed all references to Israel had been dropped. On Friday, negotiators, including Western and Muslim states, said they had ironed out the most controversial issues relating to religious discrimination and the Middle East in the draft declaration.

However, U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Wood said the draft still reaffirmed unacceptable parts of the 2001 Durban declaration referring to the Middle East conflict.

The concern over a political infighting is higher especially when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel's destruction, is expected to attend the meeting and to make a speech.

'His track record does not leave us feeling very comfortable about what he might say, given what he's said in the past on the Holocaust, on Israel and on anti-Semitism,' one official told Reuters about Ahmadinejad.

'We don't normally walk out of conferences run by the United Nations and we'd rather avoid doing it. But that doesn't mean that there aren't red lines that, if breached, would prompt us to take action.'

Mixed Views

With several countries joining the US boycott, the European Union could not reach a common position on attending the conference.

The Czech Republic, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, and Britain announced to send low-level delegations headed by their ambassadors in Geneva.

A source close to French President Nicolas Sarkozy's office told AFP late Sunday that 'France will go to Geneva... in order to articulate its standpoint on human rights issues.'

Earlier Sunday, Belgium's Foreign Minister Bart Ouvry urged EU partners to act in concert and take part 'in large numbers.'

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura said Monday that Japan would attend the conference and regretted the US boycott of the event.

Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said she was 'shocked and deeply disappointed' at the boycott.

'A handful of states have permitted one or two issues to dominate their approach to this (anti-racism) issue, allowing them to outweigh the concerns of numerous groups of people that suffer racism and similar forms of intolerance to a pernicious and life-damaging degree on a daily basis all across the world,' Pillay said in a statement.