U.S. Is Voted Off Rights
Panel of the U.N. for the First Time
By
Barbara Crossette, The New York Times
In a move
that reflected a growing frustration with America's attitude,
the United States was voted off the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
UNITED NATIONS, May 3 In a
move that reflected a growing frustration with America's attitude toward
international organizations and treaties, the United States was voted
off the United Nations Human Rights Commission today for the first time
since the panel's founding under American leadership in 1947.
The ouster of the United States
from the commission while nations like Sudan and Pakistan were chosen
for membership was certain to generate further hostility to the United
Nations among conservatives in Washington.
The unexpected move, which
came in a secret vote, was apparently supported even by some friends of
the United States. The vote also served notice that a bloc of developing
nations opposed to American policies is becoming much stronger and more
effective, and that Washington can no longer expect to be elected automatically
to important panels.
Four nations competed today
to fill three Western vacancies for three- year terms on the 53-member
commission. The secret vote is conducted among the members of the Economic
and Social Council, which oversees the Geneva-based commission and is
made up of different members than the commission, although there can be
some overlap, as there is now. France had 52 votes out of a possible 54
today, Austria got 41 and Sweden 32. The United States trailed with 29
and was eliminated.
"It's an unequivocally devastating
blow," said William H. Luers, president of the United Nations Association
of the United States, the largest American support group for the organization.
He said he feared the effect on a Congress with many critics of the organization.
"It couldn't be worse," he
said. "All the conservatives in the administration will see this as proof
that we are in an organization full of enemies."
Also elected to the commission
today were Bahrain, Korea, Pakistan, Croatia, Armenia, Chile, Mexico,
Sierra Leone, Sudan, Togo and Uganda. One-third of the seats on the commission
which meets annually to survey human rights practices, pass resolutions
critical of abusers and assign monitors are open to election every year.
President Bush (news
- web
sites), addressing the American Jewish Committee tonight, made one
of his strongest statements yet of the country's defense of human rights
and religious freedoms, dwelling on Sudan and China, but did not address
the decision on the Human Rights Committee.
Amnesty International USA called
the removal of the United States from the commission "part of an effort
by nations that routinely violate human rights to escape scrutiny." Amnesty
accused members of commission of failing to do their job, succumbing instead
to political and economic pressures.
"The U.S. was among the few
nations willing to actively push for condemnation at the U.N.H.R.C. of
the brutal human rights violations committed by nations like China," it
said.
At Human Rights Watch, Joanna
Weschler, the group's representative at the United Nations, said the commission
was becoming "a rogues' gallery of human rights abusers." But she added:
"It wasn't just enemies. It was friends as well who voted the U.S. out
of the commission."
Friends of the United States
in Europe and elsewhere have grown increasingly impatient, disappointed
and annoyed with actions by Washington.
And in recent years, critics
of the United Nations in Congress have played down American involvement
in world organizations generally, rejected a host of treaties and agreements
and built up a huge debt in overdue payments to the United Nations budget.
More than $580 million of that debt is still tied up in the House of Representatives
despite an agreement worked out in December to lower American dues.
Then came the Bush administration's
rejection of the Kyoto pact to reduce global warming and a decision to
develop a missile shield that many other nations saw as a threat to the
1972 antiballistic missile treaty and to arms control in general.
Madeleine K. Albright, who
was the United States ambassador to the United Nations before becoming
secretary of state, said in an interview that it was "beyond belief" that
at the end of the day Sudan was a member of the commission and the United
States was not. Sudan has been accused of a broad array of human rights
abuses during its civil war, including slavery.
"It's really a bad decision,
and it is not only going to harm the ability of the United Nations to
function on human rights issues because the United States was the one
who was depended upon to introduce some of the resolutions, but I also
believe that it will harm the United Nations," Dr. Albright said. "It's
one of those things where decisions are made out of some kind of short-term
pique or something like that, and it hurts very much at a time when the
United Nations needs very much to have American support."
Today, Singapore's ambassador
to the United Nations, Kishore Mahbubani, who is currently a member of
the Security Council, said it was not American human rights policies that
led to this vote, but the overall perception of American inattention to
the organization.
He said the United States would
have to be better at the active campaigning and political horse-trading
that other nations employ to gain places on important committees and other
bodies. The administration has not yet sent an ambassador to New York.
Although John Negroponte, a career diplomat, has been named to the job
of United Nations ambassador, his name has not yet been sent to the Senate
for confirmation.
Representative Nita M. Lowey,
the New York Democrat who is co-chairman of the bipartisan United Nations
working group and ranking Democrat on the House foreign operations subcommittee,
said in a statement today that what happened was an embarrassment to the
United States.
"President Bush has dragged
his feet in getting key foreign policy officials confirmed," she said.
"It is unacceptable that we still have no U.N. ambassador, and this vote
is a painful blow to to our global leadership on human rights and democracy.
The U.S. commitment to human rights has fallen victim to the administration's
laissez-faire attitude toward diplomacy and foreign policy."
The acting United States ambassador
to the United Nations, James B. Cunningham, said today that the outcome
"won't, of course, affect our commitment to human rights issues, in and
outside the United Nations."
Jean-David Levitte, the French
ambassador, attributed the overwhelming vote for France to its policy
of approaching human rights issues with cooperation and dialogue rather
than confrontation, a system he said worked well with China. France and
other European nations did not back an American resolution at the just-concluded
six-week annual session of the Human Rights Commission that would have
held China up to public criticism.
But, Mr. Levitte said, that
did not mean that France was prepared to go soft on human rights issues
in the commission, where the French often back American moves on other
issues. "We need the U.S. engagement in the U.N., and we need the U.S.
in the Human Rights Commission," he said. "My hope is that what happened
will not trigger bitter feelings in the U.S. Congress and a new fever
against the U.N."
In Washington, Representative
Christopher H. Smith, Republican of New Jersey and vice chairman of the
House International Relations Committee, who took part in the recent annual
commission meeting in Geneva as part of the Bush administration's delegation,
said he was "disappointed but not surprised" by today's action.
"In Geneva, there was a great
deal of animosity about the United States bringing the resolution on China,"
he said. "This seems to me to be a retaliation in part for standing side
by side with Israel and standing out on China. This to me is payback for
our principled positions."
Mr. Smith backs a Congressional
call for American action in voting countries that abuse rights off the
commission if the panel's credibility is to survive.
Felice Gaer, director of the
Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights in New York
and a member of the United Nations Committee Against Torture, said the
American delegation at this year's Human Rights Commission meeting, did
a lot of good in pressing for criticism of countries like China, Iran
and Cuba. But when it came to issues like children's rights and the outlawing
of "disappearances," the United States took an aggressively negative stand.
William vanden Heuvel, a former
merican deputy representative at the United Nations who is now chairman
of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in Hyde Park, N.Y., said
today's vote would have "serious repercussions" on the Human Rights Commission,
which Mrs. Roosevelt helped to create. He said, moreover, that to have
all three new Western seats filled by members of the European Union was
questionable. But he also said the United States had to face a new reality.
"There are so many people in
so many countries who are so angry at the United States for not living
up to its word," he said, after a briefing for ambassadors here before
the vote in the Economic and Social Council. "We're advised too by our
representatives how various members of the United Nations are increasingly
finding the United States an untrustworthy partner."
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