Australia has threatened to withdraw from a the United Nations Durban Review Conference on racism next month in Geneva unless the wording of a document it considers hostile to Israel is dropped or substantially altered. Canada, Israel, Italy and the United States have already withdrawn from preparations for the meeting. "If we form the view that the text is going to lead to nothing more than an anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic harangue, an anti-Jewish propaganda exercise, Australia will not be in attendance," the country’s foreign minister Stephen Smith told Parliament in Canberra.
Critics also object to final declaration sections they say could limit freedom of religion or speech. The United States and Israel walked out of the first UN conference on racism in Durban, South Africa, in 2001, in protest against an attempted resolution likening Zionism to racism.
See the WJC feature on the Durban Review Conference
