London, April 20 – Britain is expected to attend a controversial United Nations conference on racism, a Foreign Office spokesman told AFP Sunday.
“We’re watching how things develop. It’s still our intention to attend,” the spokesman said ahead of the conference in Geneva Monday, which the United States, Australia and Netherlands have declined to join.
The event, being attended by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will review efforts to fight racism since the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, in 2001.
Ahmadinejad, who has described the Holocaust as a myth, is due to address the conference Monday, the anniversary of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s birth.
The spokesman said Britain wanted the conference “to get a collective will to fight racism now” but was “under no illusions about the scale of this challenge.”
“We wouldn’t be able to support a process that was skewed against the West or other countries,” the spokesman said, adding that Britain had certain “red lines” on the issues involved that it would stick to.
“We have argued for the concluding document to have sufficient (content) on the Holocaust and combatting anti-Semitism… we would find it unacceptable if the process seeks to deny or denigrate the Holocaust”.
The British delegation will be headed by its ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Peter Gooderham.
The US and Israel walked out of the 2001 conference in a row over anti-Semitism.
This time, the US has said it is “unable to support” some of the language in declaration set to be adopted by the conference, a position shared by Australia.
Meanwhile, the Netherlands said the conference was “far too important to be abused for political ends and attacks on the West.”
(source ANTARA/AFP)