The Obama administration said late Saturday that it would participate in planning for a U.N. conference on racism despite concerns the meeting will be used by Arab nations and others to criticize Israel…. During the Bush administration the United States and Israel walked out of the first U.N. conference on racism in Durban, South Africa, in 2001 over efforts to pass a resolution comparing Zionism – the movement to establish and maintain a Jewish state – to racism. Those efforts failed but there are signs the resolution may be reintroduced at the so-called “Durban 2” meeting in Geneva and Israel has been actively lobbying the United States and European countries to stay away from this year’s meeting.