The State Department spokesman said, regarding the completion of plenary events for Durban II to which the U.S. delegation attempted to address concerns of anti-Semitism:
“I believe the meetings have ended now in Geneva. Part of our delegation is – of course, is based in Geneva and part of the delegation is on its way back to the U.S. So I haven’t had a full briefing on their views of what happened. We went into this meeting – excuse me – we went into this meeting with grave concerns about the document that was being produced. And we engaged with other countries in an effort to have the conference produce a document that actually did address racism around the world in a way that could achieve some results.
Our intervention was welcomed by many countries. We had extensive meetings with all of the other representatives there to present our viewpoints on this document and on this process. I can’t predict any success for you at this point, first not having had a read-out from the group. But as I said, there were many things we disagreed with in the document. The document began as a very lengthy piece of work and got longer during the conference itself. The intention was to engage and to try and make something that was flawed better. We did not predict success, and I can’t do that for you now. But we are on – you know, on the record with our international partners as to where we stand on these issues.”
Meanwhile, the State Department also released this statement regarding the conference, although the statement essentially says that U.S. attendance has yet to be determined.
For my analysis of a U.S. stance to the conference, see this post.
