|
U.S. Angry Over U.N. hip
Policy 5n206e
George Gedda, Associated
Press. Posted on Wed, Dec. 08, 2004 in Fort
Wayne Journal Gazette, IN.
WASHINGTON - Most people would say countries
that tolerate slavery should be ineligible
for hip on the U.N. Commission on
Human Rights. Same goes for those guilty
of crimes against humanity.
The presumption is that egregious rights
violators have no business on a commission
whose prime purpose is supposed to be to
protect rights.
But in a report last week, a U.N.
established by Secretary-General Kofi Annan
rejected the notion that there should be
any standards at all for hip on the
Human Rights Commission. That means Sudan
need not worry about losing its seat on
the 53-member commission even though the
country stands accused by the United States
of committing genocide in its western Darfur
province.
At the State Department, frustration over
the commission is accelerating, and officials
wonder how long the United States can justify
its continued hip on the if
current trends continue.
Of particular concern to Washington is
an expected move next year to prohibit the
introduction of commission resolutions aimed
at specific countries.
That would bar the United States from proposing
measures critical of human rights policies
in China and Cuba, as Washington does virtually
every year at the annual commission meetings
in Geneva. If the ban should , the commission
could do little more than approve resolutions
condemning religious persecution or suppression
of labor without identifying perpetrators.
Led by China, many lesser developed countries
resent the emphasis on human rights by the
United States and other industrialized democracies.
Their priorities are economic rights and
economic development. China's representative
on the Annan commission made this view clear,
with strong from African countries,
particularly South Africa.
It is not only poorer countries that consider
U.S. economic sanctions against Cuba unjust.
Votes against the Cuba embargo in the U.N.
General Assembly are routine every year.
This year's vote was 179 to 4 against the
four-decade old policy, with only the United
States, Israel, the Marshall Islands and
Palau in .
The United States finds the General Assembly's
record on Sudan especially appalling. Last
month, the Assembly refused even to consider
a Sudan resolution sponsored by the European
Union to condemn Sudan's record in Darfur.
The outgoing U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations, John Danforth, used highly undiplomatic
language in describing what he regards as
the Assembly's insensitivity to the suffering
in Darfur, where well over 1 million black
Africans have been uprooted from their homes
by government-backed Arab militias.
"The message from the General Assembly
is very simple, and it is: You may be suffering,
but we can't be bothered," Danforth
said.
At another point, he said persistent failures
of U.N. "to present a unified
front against well-documented atrocities
would represent nothing less than the complete
breakdown of the U.N.'s deliberative bodies
related to human rights. "
Danforth announced his resignation in November
after only five months at the U.N. post.
He said he wanted to spend more time with
his family, but he also had indicated beforehand
that he did not intend to remain on the
job very long because of frustrations over
Sudan and other issues.
This past spring, the Africa bloc, showing
disdain for Western concern over Sudan,
nominated the Islamic government for a third
consecutive term on the U.N. rights commission.
When the United States ed its disapproval,
a Sudanese diplomat, Omar Bashir Manis,
said it was ironic for Washington to raise
objections in light of the "atrocities"
committed by American forces at the Abu
Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Election to a seat for Sudan "is not
at all different" from the United States
itself winning a seat, said Manis, who saw
the Abu Ghraib scandal as a handy way to
question whether Washington has the moral
authority to criticize the rights performance
of others.
|
