U.S. WILL PASS ON RIGHTS COUNCIL, FOR NOW
By Nick Wadhams
Associated Press Writer

AP
Thursday April 6, 2006 7:16 PM

UNITED NATIONS (AP) – The United States will not seek a seat on the
new U.N. Human Rights Council but will likely run next year and pledges
to work with the new body, the State Department announced Thursday.

“Our nation has led and must continue to lead at the U.N. and around
the world. We will continue to do so,” State Department spokesman Sean
McCormack said after announcing in Washington that the U.S. will not
be a candidate in next month’s election.

Observers said the United States decided against running because it
wants to see how the new body takes shape and amid concerns it would
not receive the necessary 96 votes to be elected to the council.

The council will replace the highly politicized and often criticized
Human Rights Commission, which was discredited in recent years because
some countries with terrible human rights records used their membership
to protect one another from condemnation. Commission members in recent
years included Sudan, Libya, Zimbabwe and Cuba.

Elections to the new 47-member council will be held May 9 and its
first meeting will take place June 19 in Geneva.

So far, 35 countries have declared their candidacy to be members of
the new council, including Cuba and Iran.

The United States was virtually alone in voting against the council
when the U.N. General Assembly approved its creation last month. U.S.

officials said not enough was done to prevent abusive countries from
becoming members.

Officials also raised the fear of a possible U.S. defeat during a
U.S. National Security Council meeting earlier this week, said one
person who was at the meeting but insisted on anonymity because it
was secret.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan “is obviously disappointed,” U.N.

spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

“However, we very much hope that the U.S. will continue to be an active
player in the defense of universal human rights and support the work
of the new Human Rights Council as it goes ahead, and we also very
much hope they will participate in the elections next year,” he said.

A key sticking point during the negotiations had been the U.S.

insistence that members be elected by two-thirds of the General
Assembly, not the absolute majority as is required.

Yet concern had grown since the council was created that the United
States, stung by criticism over the Iraq invasion and its handling
of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere in its war on terror,
might not win a majority vote.

“It’s unfortunate that the Bush administration’s disturbing human
rights record means that the United States would hardly have been a
shoo-in for election to the council,” said Kenneth Roth, executive
director of Human Rights Watch. “Today’s decision not to run seems
like an effort to make a virtue of necessity.”

Many members of the Congress – including Henry Hyde, the Republican
chairman of the House International Relations Committee, and Tom
Lantos, the body’s ranking Democrat – had urged the United States to
join. “Today’s announcement projects a picture of profound weakness in
U.S. diplomacy,” Lantos said Thursday in a statement. “It should not
have been a heavy lift for our diplomats in New York and in foreign
capitals to recruit the necessary 96 affirmative votes to seat the
United States in the new council.”

Countries serve a maximum of two three-year terms. Then they must
leave the council before running again.

Bolton said earlier that the United States will work with other member
states “to make the council as strong and effective as it can be.”

The U.S. mission to the United Nations in New York had no comment.

Human rights groups had urged the United States to seek a seat on the
council, saying that any such body that did not have the U.S. voice in
it could be weakened. By not seeking a seat, the United States also
will be left out of decisions that will shape the council’s work,
they said.

Under the rules for the new council, any U.N. member can announce
its candidacy any time until the vote is completed. Members of the
council must be elected by an absolute majority of the 191 U.N.

states – 96 members. The United States lobbied unsuccessfully to have
the new council elected by a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly
to keep out rights abusers.

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

Algeria is the only African candidate so far. The Asian candidates to
date are Bangladesh, China, India, Iran, Jordan, Pakistan and South
Korea. There are 13 candidates for the six East European seats –
Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Hungary,
Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovenia and Ukraine. Six
countries are seeking the eight Latin American and Caribbean seats –
Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru.

Eight countries who have announced their candidacies for the seven
Western seats – Britain, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Greece,
Portugal and Switzerland.

If the United States had decided to run, it would have been running
in this group.

The council was endorsed by key human rights groups, a dozen Nobel
Peace Prize winners including former President Carter, and 170
countries who voted “yes” on the resolution – including a surprise
endorsement from Cuba.

—

Associated Press writer Anne Gearan in Washington contributed to
this story.