US off UNHRC (NYT)

Here is another view, which underlines the geopolitical dimension
(intensifying rivalry of the US and Europe).  I wonder if the Bush
administration realizes that its unwillingness to consult with other
countries (whether on Kyoto, missile defense, Iraq, etc., etc.) and its
increasingly isolationist tone is beginning to cost the US its global
leadership.

-- 
May 4, 2001 



U.S. Is Voted Off Rights Panel of the U.N. for the First Time


By BARBARA CROSSETTE


Washington Angry Over Losing Rights Seat (May 4, 2001)



Join a Discussion on U.S. Foreign Policy

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, 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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