UNITED NATIONS – If the majority here gets its way, President Obama may attend next year an event celebrating a decade of verbal anti-Israel attacks at the same time that most Americans commemorate the tenth anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil.

Countries pushing to convene a “Durban III” conference in the fall of 2011 are hoping to schedule the parley on September 11. They also call on heads of state, who will gather in New York at that time to attend the annual debate of the United Nations General Assembly, to participate in the so-called world conference against racism.

At a meeting yesterday of the General Assembly’s third committee, which deals with social, humanitarian, and cultural affairs, several states called to assemble next year’s “Durban III” meeting at the level of heads of state. America opposed the resolution and other Western democracies voted against it or abstained. The Third Committee resolution must next be approved by the assembly’s plenary, where, as one veteran U.N. official said afterwards, “you can always get enough votes for Durban.”

America “should announce publicly, right now, that we will stay away from Durban III, deny it U.S. taxpayer dollars, and oppose all measures that seek to facilitate it – and we should encourage other responsible nations to do the same,” Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Republican of Florida, said in a statement last night.

Ms. Ros-Lehtinen, who has emerged as Washington’s strongest voice for accountability at the United Nations and also one of Capitol Hill’s strongest supporters of Israeli policies, is expected to become chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee next year. But she might find herself at odds on both issues with an administration that has favored a soft line on U.N. transgressions, and that has concentrated much of its Middle East tactics on pressuring Israel to change its housing policies.

For Mr. Obama, nevertheless, the choice on this issue should be quite easy. Attending a Turtle Bay gathering that has been criticized by groups from across the political spectrum at the same time that the city of New York remembers ten years of Islamist terrorism would be a political mistake. And as one European diplomat explained the U.N. rules, “they can’t force any head of state to attend” the Durban III parley.

America walked out of the original conference that took place at Durban, South Africa, shortly before the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York. Secretary of State Powell decided to pull the American delegation out once it became clear that the gathering – titled World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance – was dominated by anti-Israel and anti-Semitic groups.

Last year, a “Durban Review Conference,” which was convened in Geneva to verify implementation of the 2001 resolutions, was dominated by leaders like President Ahmadinejad, who called for Israel’s destruction, and Colonel Qadhaffi, who called for the creation of an Arab-Jewish “Isratine” to erase Israel’s Jewish identity.