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GENEVA-Diplomats reached agreement on Friday on a declaration for next week's politically charged United Nations conference on racism, adding to the pressure on Washington and Brussels to decide whether to attend.The 16-page text omits references to Israel, Zionism, the Middle East conflict and other divisive issues that have made Western powers shy away from the "Durban II" conference, which follows up on a 2001 racism conference in South Africa.Israel and its ally, the United States, walked out of the Durban meeting after Arab and Muslim states tried to insert language defining Zionism as racist.U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said she would be "very surprised" if the document meets resistance in the Geneva meeting, which Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will address on Monday."I feel very certain because this was so well deliberated by all groups that it will have an easy passage through the conference," she told a news briefing at the U.N.'s Palais des Nations complex, where the April 20-24 conference will be held.The European Union and United States have been waiting to see a final version of the text before deciding who, if anyone, to send. Canada and Israel are boycotting the meeting because they think hostility towards Israel could dominate the forum.Asked about the latest text, State Department Robert Wood said that Washington was still weighing its options."The United States still has some concerns," Wood told Reuters. "No decision has been made yet whether to attend or participate. We need to have our concerns addressed."The White House has been especially uneasy about efforts by Arab states to include a condemnation of "incitement to religious hatred" and to criminalise "defamation of religion".It sees those efforts as an attempt to limit free expression in response to controversy over the Danish cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Mohammad in 2006.U.S. diplomats distanced themselves from negotiations over the text in past months, a decision Pillay said was unfortunate."It is to my tremendous regret that they did not come and try to persuade the other states on amendments that would be acceptable to them," she told journalists.There was no immediate comment from the European Union, whose member states are expected to meet on the weekend to seek a common decision about taking part.(Additional reporting by Luke Baker in London, Madeline Chambers in Berlin, David Brunnstrom in Brussels and Sue Pleming in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Wright)
By Laura McInnis
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