ROME • The Italian cabinet has approved a draft law imposing jail terms for racist or ethnically motivated crimes, but stopped short of making Holocaust denial illegal following opposition from some Jewish leaders and others.

The bill, which must be approved by Parliament, stipulates a jail term of up to four years for committing or inciting acts of discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender or sexual orientation.

Laws against racial hatred have existed on and off in Italian legislation but have been vague.

The bill’s author, Justice Minister Clemente Mastella, said the new law would make “effective repression of any outburst of racial superiority or racial hate more efficient.”

But Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s government, which passed the measure late on Thursday night, backed off from Mastella’s initial plan to make denying the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews a crime.

Several top university professors wrote an open letter saying Holocaust denial was effectively a cultural problem that could not be solved with jail sentences.

Rome’s former chief rabbi, Elio Toaff, who was himself tortured and almost killed by the Nazis during the German occupation of Italy, doubted that the measure could stop anti-Semitism.

Denying the Holocaust is a crime punishable in European countries like Germany, Austria and Switzerland with prison terms of as much as 10 years.

In New York, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on Friday condemning denials of the Holocaust, weeks after Iran sponsored a meeting dominated by speakers questioning the extermination of 6 million Jews in World War Two.

The resolution, co-sponsored by 103 countries, was approved by consensus, without a vote.