Other European Union countries should follow Italy in boycotting an upcoming United Nations World Conference Against Racism, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Friday.
Italy was the first EU country to follow Israel, Canada and the United States by withdrawing Thursday from the Durban Review Conference, a follow-up to the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.
Critics say both the original 2001 conference in Durban and preparatory meetings for the 2009 meeting undermined UN principles because of open anti-Israel sentiment, and other countries are also considering a boycott.
''I have spoken personally with the Netherlands, France and Denmark: everyone has major doubts and I hope they will follow our example,'' Frattini said.
The minister reiterated calls for organisers to remove ''clearly antisemitic expressions and phrases breeding intolerance'' from a draft declaration for the conference, which is due to take place in Geneva on April 20-24.
Frattini said Thursday that Italy considered the phrases in the document ''totally unacceptable''.
On Friday the spokesman for the United Nations' Human Rights Commission, Rupert Colville, appealed for states to ''put aside political divisions and narrow interests' and participate in the conference.
He said that while Italy and the United States ''were disturbed'' by some aspects of the draft document, both countries seemed ready to return to the table if satisfactory changes are made in the text.
''There are more than six weeks before the conference and there's still time for the countries to create a text that is acceptable for everyone,'' he said.
''It's clear that the countries must make a real effort to arrive at a concluson that can help the millions of individuals in the world who suffer from racism, xenophobia and intolerance,'' he added.
Both the World Jewish Congress (WJC) and the European Jewish Congress renewed calls for countries to boycott the conference earlier this week.
WJC President Ronald Lauder said in a statement that the conference ''was not about combating racism, but about promoting anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda within the framework of the United Nations''.
He said that ''no good'' could result from a conference where countries ''such as Libya, Iran, Pakistan and Syria are dictating the agenda'', claiming they were ''attempting to protect their extremist ideologies under the disguise of banning the 'defamation of religion' while at the same time refusing to condemn Holocaust denial''
