US Support Sought on Human Rights Council 
March 14, 2006
The New York Times
Original Source: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Human-Rights.html

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Several key supporters of the proposed Human Rights Council, including the European Union and Canada, are trying to find a compromise that would overcome U.S. objections to rules governing the new body, Canada's U.N. ambassador said.
The supporters are trying to get as many countries as possible to sign a letter to the United States or make a statement in the General Assembly after a consensus vote that would address U.S. concerns that human rights abusers could still be elected to the new council.
World leaders at last September's U.N. summit decided to create a new body to replace the discredited U.N. Human Rights Commission, which has been criticized for allowing some of the worst rights-offending countries to use their membership to protect one another from condemnation. In recent years, commission members have included Sudan, Libya, Zimbabwe and Cuba.
The leaders left the details of establishing the council to the General Assembly, whose president, Jan Eliasson, produced a compromise proposal late last month after lengthy negotiations. While it didn't give any country everything it wanted, many said it would strengthen the U.N.'s human rights efforts and signed on -- as did the leading human rights organizations and a dozen Nobel Peace Prize winners.
But the United States objected and insisted that the only way forward was to reopen negotiations on the text, a prospect Eliasson has all but rejected. He said members have told him this would open ''Pandora's Box.''
The Americans want members of the council to be elected by a two-thirds vote, not the simple majority now called for, to help keep rights abusers out. They also want the text to explicitly bar any nation from joining the council if it is under sanction by the United Nations. The current draft says only that such measures would be taken into account when deciding membership.
''A number of us concerned about this are making an effort to persuade the largest number of member states to sign a letter to the United States to confirm their commitment never to vote for a country subject to Security Council sanctions for human rights reasons,'' said Canada's U.N. Ambassador Allan Rock.
The letter would also ''express a willingness to conduct a review of the council in a period shorter than five years,'' he said in an interview.
Such a review would enable the 191-member General Assembly to examine whether the Human Rights Council should be a principal organ of the United Nations, ''with the result that it would require two-thirds vote to become a member,'' Rock said.
As an alternative to the letter, countries could make the same commitments in statements of explanation of their vote following the adoption of the resolution to establish the council by consensus, he said.
''Our hope is that if we persuade a sufficiently large number of countries to do one or the other, we might be able to persuade the American government ... to agree that the resolution might be adopted by consensus,'' Rock said.
This would allow the new council to start work, ''while at the same time the two issues identified by the Americans as most fundamental would have been addressed,'' Rock said.
He said the EU, Switzerland, New Zealand and Canada are working together and asking all member states to support the idea, ''and we're making encouraging progress.''
''We think later this week the president of the General Assembly will bring it before the General Assembly, and we hope by that time to have amassed a very significant number,'' Rock said.
But whether a letter or explanation of vote would be acceptable to the United States remains a serious question.
Several U.N. diplomats see divisions within President Bush's administration, with some strongly opposed but others seeking a compromise.
''There is a very serious attempt to try and reach some kind of compromise which would allow the U.S. to come on board,'' Israel's U.N. Ambassador Dan Gillerman. ''I'm not sure it's going to work.''