Proposal for council irks Cuba, U.S.

Posted on Fri, Mar. 03, 2006

HUMAN RIGHTS
Proposal for council irks Cuba, U.S.
The United States and Cuba are fighting over reforming the discredited
U.N. Human Rights Commission.
By PABLO BACHELET
pbachelet@MiamiHerald.com

WASHINGTON - After months of wrangling, a U.N. diplomatic battle that
pits Cuba against Washington over an overhaul of a controversial
human-rights panel may be approaching an end.

General Assembly President Jan Eliasson of Sweden last week produced a
draft proposing a 47-member Human Rights Council to replace the U.N.
Human Rights Commission, widely discredited because rights abusers like
Cuba, Libya and Zimbabwe have gotten themselves elected to the
commission to try to block its condemnations.

Year after year, U.S. and Cuban officials at the commission have clashed
at their annual meeting in Geneva as Washington pushed through
resolutions condemning Havana's human-rights abuses.

Most major human-rights organizations, the European Union and U.N.
Secretary General Kofi Annan are backing Eliasson's draft as an
acceptable attempt that would make it harder for rights abusers to get
voted into the council.

But U.S. Ambassador John Bolton has said the proposed changes are too
weak and wants major modifications, even if this means months of delays.
Cuban-American lawmakers also criticized the Eliasson draft, and Miami
Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen on Thursday called it ``a
reshuffling of the deck chairs on the Titanic.''

ANNAN'S VIEW

Annan on Thursday urged Washington to reconsider its position. ''The bad
must always give in to the good, but the better must not be the enemy of
the good,'' he told reporters.

Cuba also opposes the Eliasson draft as a U.S. imperialist ploy to
subjugate poor nations. ''We're witnessing another blow to
multilateralism,'' it said Tuesday.

Eliasson has said he wants the matter settled quickly, preferably before
March 13, when the annual Geneva meeting of the current 53-member Human
Rights Commission is scheduled to begin.

''We're not willing to settle for something just to meet that
deadline,'' retorted Ben Chang, a spokesman for the U.S. mission at the
United Nations.

EXPECTED TO PASS

Most observers expect the resolution to pass easily, although a U.S.
''no'' vote makes many uneasy.

Britain's U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones cautioned that creating the new
council without U.S. backing ``isn't good for human rights, and not
particularly good for the council.''

But rights groups argue that opening the Eliasson draft to a
line-by-line negotiation risks making it worse, not better.

U.S. officials ''believe they can come up with a better compromise
position,'' said Eric Olson, the director for government relations at
Amnesty International. ``Our estimation is that that's not the case.''

STICKING POINT

The key sticking point is how members get elected to the new council.

In the past, commission members were voted from slates presented by
regions, which were then voted on as a block by the 54-member ECOSOC,
the UN's economic and social committee. Cuba routinely was included in
the Latin American region's slate.

MAJOR VOICE

Under the new proposal, the regions would propose individual nations,
which would then require majority approval at the General Assembly -- 96
votes. The United States also wants no more than 30 members.

Ros-Lehtinen has emerged as a major voice supporting Bolton's position.
On Thursday, she teamed up with fellow Miami Republican Lincoln
Diaz-Balart in seeking signatures for a letter criticizing the proposed
reforms.

She said the new council has no criteria for membership other than
urging nations to take into account the candidates' contribution to the
promotion and protection of human rights.

''Essentially, it asks dictators and rogue regimes to review their own
human-rights record and determine whether they would be eligible,'' she
said.

And the required approval by the General Assembly is meaningless, she
added. ``This is the same General Assembly that . . . amidst the
genocide in Darfur, could not agree that Sudan was guilty of
human-rights violations.''

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