This one’s a bit of a surprise, because New Zealand is moonbat central: NZ won’t attend racism conference.

Labour and the Greens are at odds with the Government over its decision to boycott this week’s United Nations conference on racism.

Foreign Minister Murray McCully confirmed today New Zealand would not take part, joining other countries including the United States, Australia, Canada, Italy, Israel and Germany.

The Geneva conference is in trouble because of intense sensitivity around Israel and Arab states – the last UN meeting called to condemn racism ended in chaos when Muslim delegates tried to insert language into a declaration defining Zionism as racist.

The US walked out of that conference in 2001 and won’t attend this one despite a draft declaration which doesn’t mention Israel, the Middle East or any other divisive issues.

Mr McCully said New Zealand would not attend because he was not satisfied the wording of the draft declaration would prevent the conference from “descending into the same kind of rancorous and unproductive debate that took place in 2001”.

“I was determined that New Zealand’s participation in the review conference would be on the basis of a draft outcome document that did not endorse the 2001 declaration, and which responsibly and productively addressed racism.”