NETHERLANDS THREATENS BOYCOTT OF UN ANTI-RACISM CONFERENCE

This is a follow-up to the item about Canada and Israel pulling out of next
year's charade of a UN anti-racism conference in the dispatch "Jimmy Carter
pleads with Hizbullah to meet him, but Hizbullah refuse" (Dec. 12, 2008)
www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/000993.html

The Netherlands became the latest country to say that it will boycott the
conference if anti-Israel and anti-Semitic statements are not scrapped from
draft texts currently being circulated.

Dutch foreign minister Maxime Verhagen told Dutch radio he would not "be
involved in anti-Semitism" at the meeting planned for April in Geneva. Israel
and Canada have already withdrawn from the forum, which is a follow-up to the
2001 UN anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa, which degenerated into
an anti-Semitic debacle. The United States has protested against the
conference, but has not yet decided if it will attend.

In 2001, then Secretary of State Colin Powell withdrew the U.S. delegation,
telling the UN organizers that you don't combat racism by singling out "only
one country in the world - Israel - for endless censure and abuse."