U.S. Declines Seat on U.N. Rights Council 

By The Associated Press
April 7, 2006
Source: The New York Times
Original Source: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-UN-Human-Rights-Council.html

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The United States decided to forgo a seat on the new U.N. Human Rights Council this year rather than risk a losing battle for a panel it considers deeply flawed. But 42 countries announced their candidacy, including Cuba and Iran.

The United States was alone among the five veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council to avoid the 47-nation human rights body. Russia, China, Britain and France all applied for a seat.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Thursday the United States would not be a candidate in the May 9 election, though it will support and finance the new council and likely seek a seat next year.

''The United States will actively campaign on behalf of candidates genuinely committed to the promotion and protection of human rights and ... will also actively campaign against states that systematically abuse human rights,'' he said.

The United States was virtually alone in voting against establishing the council to replace the highly politicized and often criticized Human Rights Commission, arguing that the new body was only marginally better and wouldn't keep rights-abusing countries from winning seats.

The 53-member commission was discredited in recent years because some countries with terrible human rights records used their membership to protect one another from condemnation. Members in recent years have included Sudan, Libya, Zimbabwe and Cuba.

A key sticking point during the negotiations was U.S. insistence that members be elected by two-thirds of the 191-nation General Assembly -- a step aimed at keeping out rights abusers. The U.S. effort failed, and members of the new council must be elected by an absolute majority -- 96 member states.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said the United States concluded that since the council has ''fundamental flaws'' Washington would skip this year's election and concentrate on other priorities, including the overhaul of U.N. management. But he indicated the United States was also concerned about whether it could win a contested election.

President Bush's administration has been strongly criticized in many countries for invading Iraq and for the U.S. treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison.

During a U.S. National Security Council meeting earlier this week, U.S. officials raised the possibility of U.S. defeat, according to a person who was at the meeting and spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the closed session.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Bolton recalled the U.S. defeat for a seat on the Human Rights Commission in 2001 and said the United States would face another contested election if it ran this year.

''I think that a decision by us to run had to be a decision that we were going to win, and that would mean either defeating other Western candidates or getting some of the rest of them to withdraw,'' Bolton said.

Some human rights groups and members of the U.S. Congress were dismayed at the U.S. decision.

Rep. Tom Lantos, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, called it ''a major retrenchment in America's long struggle to advance the cause of human rights around the world.''

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said ''it's unfortunate that the Bush administration's disturbing human rights record means that the United States would hardly have been a shoe-in for election to the council.''

The new council was endorsed by key human rights groups, a dozen Nobel Peace Prize laureates including former President Carter, and 170 countries that voted ''yes'' on the resolution -- including a surprise approval by Cuba.

Under the rules for the new council, any U.N. member can announce its candidacy any time until the vote is completed. Countries can serve a maximum of two three-year terms and must leave the council before running again.

To ensure global representation, Africa and Asia would have 13 seats each; Latin America and the Caribbean eight; Western nations, seven; and Eastern Europe, six.

In a statement appealing for support for its candidacy, Cuba said it has ''tremendous achievements'' in human rights, most importantly in exercising the right of self-determination against ''the unilateral policy of hostility, aggression and blockade imposed on it by the superpower.''