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

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/04/world/04NATI.html

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

The New York Times, May 4, 2001

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."