Diplomats at the UN racism conference in South Africa are searching for ways to repair the damage done by Monday's walk-out by the US delegation.
The Americans, followed by Israel, pulled out after failing to have "hateful" language about the Jewish state removed from meeting documents.
European delegates - who expressed sympathy for the US stance but did not follow their lead - are working through the night to draft a "completely new text" on the Middle East conflict.
"But that does not mean that we are necessarily going to have anything approaching an agreed text on Tuesday," a European Union spokesman said. "There are still four days to go before the conference ends."
The conference in the South African port city of Durban reached deadlock on Monday when paragraphs criticising Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people came up for discussion.
Arab and Islamic countries want Israel singled out for condemnation in the conference's final declaration and have rejected a compromise text proposed by Norway and backed by the US.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell had already boycotted the event, but a mid-level US diplomatic team had been sent to Durban where it was heavily involved in behind-the-scenes efforts to amend the wording - although they took no public role in the conference.
Smearing Israel
Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres called the activities at the South African conference an "unbelievable attempt to smear Israel."
"An important convention that's supposed to defend human rights became a source of hatred," he told a news conference in Jerusalem.
Human rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said they were disappointed by the US and Israeli decision.
"By walking out in the middle of the conference, the US is letting down the victims of racism on all sides," Amnesty spokeswoman Maya Catsanis said.
Earlier in the day, divisions emerged between the European over the other most controversial issue of the conference - the question of whether former slave trading nations should apologise for past misdeeds.
'Racist crimes'
On Sunday, a human rights forum coinciding with the conference equated Zionism - the movement which led to the establishment of a Jewish state in 1948 - with racism and called for international sanctions against Israel.
The forum's declaration - which will be presented to the summit organisers for consideration - branded Israel "a racist apartheid state" and called for an end to its "systematic perpetration of racist crimes, including war crimes, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing."
Israeli delegate Mordechai Yedid made a strongly-worded speech to the conference on Monday saying Arab and Islamic states trying to label Israel and Zionism as racist were being anti-Semitic themselves.
"The outrageous and manic accusations we have heard here are attempts to turn a political issue into a racial one, with almost no hope of resolution," Mr Yedid said.
Amr Moussa - the former Egyptian foreign minister who now heads the League of Arab States - warned against the issuing of a final declaration in which too much weight was given to one side.
"What is the use of the document that will be tilted to one or the other. It will just be condemned and thrown away and not implemented at all," he said.
The conference began last Thursday and
continues until 7 September.
-- Anonymous, September 03, 2001