(AFP) — President Barack Obama vowed Sunday to work with UN efforts to battle racism despite his government's boycott of a major UN conference on the problem this week.
Asked about the boycott during Sunday's press conference, Obama defended the decision.
"I would love to be involved in a useful conference that addressed continuing issues of racism and discrimination around the globe," he said.
But the US president said inclusion of anti-Israel language that was "oftentimes completely hypocritical and counterproductive" in the draft final communique was a red line for his administration.
"We expressed in the run-up to this conference our concerns that if you incorporated, if you adopted, all the language from 2001, that's just not something we can sign up for," he said.
