WELLINGTON, New Zealand - UNESCO has added 22 new natural and cultural sites to its World Heritage list, but it also stripped a region from the list for the first time.

The U.N. culture committee, meeting in New Zealand in late June and early July, removed Oman's Arabian Oryx Sanctuary from the list. UNESCO said Oman was cutting the size of the sanctuary by 90 percent to prospect for oil, and that the oryx there - a type of antelope - had dwindled from 450 to 65 since 1994.

With Oman's deletion, there are now 851 sites on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

Another action taken by the World Heritage committee was to change the name by which its list refers to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. Auschwitz will now be listed as "Auschwitz-Birkenau. German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945)." Poland, which was subjected to a brutal Nazi occupation, sought the name change to show that it did not establish or run the camp.

New sites added to the UNESCO list include the Sydney Opera House in Australia; Japan's Iwami Ginzan Silver Mine; the Parthian Fortresses of Nisa in Turkmenistan; and The Red Fort Complex in New Delhi, India — a sprawling 17th-century red sandstone structure built by Mogul emperors.

Also added to the list were archaeological remains in the Iraqi city of Samarra, which were described as being "in danger" with no specific mention made of the war in Iraq. Samarra, considered a holy city by Shiite Muslims, is home to some of Iraq's richest cultural treasures including majestic ruins stretching along the eastern bank of the Tigris river and the 9th-century Great Mosque, with a 170-foot-tall spiral minaret.

Other new sites on the list are the Mehmed Paa Sokolovic Bridge of Viegrad in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada's Rideau Canal, Port of the Moon in Bordeaux, France, Greece's Old Town of Corfu, Gabon's Lope-Okanda landscape, the Richtersveld mountainous desert region of South Africa, Namibia's Twyfelfontein, known for rock carvings and artifacts, and 1,800 fortified tower houses in China's Guangdong province.

The Teide National Park on the island of Tenerife in Spain, primeval beech forests in the Carpathians of Central Europe, and Switzerland's Lavaux vineyard terraces along Lake Geneva, where vines can be traced to the 11th century, joined the list as well, along with the Jeju Volcanic Island and Lava Tubes of South Korea, rainforests of the Altsinanana in Madagascar, and the South China Karst region, which offers a diversity of landscapes, from stone forests to tropical.

Other sites that received the World Heritage designation were the central campus of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, the fortified palace compound of Gamzigrad-Romuliana in Serbia, the Gobustan rock art of central Azerbaijan.

The committee also expanded an already heritage-protected area of Switzerland's high Alps site of Jungfrau-Aletsch Bietschhorn.

In addition, UNESCO officials expressed concern over development at Tibet's Potala palace and five other Chinese World Heritage sites, including Beijing's ancient imperial palace, summer palace and Temple of Heaven, a specialist with the group told The Associated Press. UNESCO urged corrective measures such as conservation and better planning. Potala, for example, is increasingly hemmed in by nondescript modern buildings. China has a total of 35 sites on the list.

Local governments compete ferociously for World Heritage designations, which can increase tourism and revenues.