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UN creates new rights council over US objections
Reuters
By Evelyn Leopold
March 15, 2006

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations General Assembly created a new U.N. human rights body by an overwhelming majority on Wednesday, ignoring objections from the United States.

Ambassadors broke out in sustained applause when the vote was announced: 170-4 with 3 abstentions. Joining the United States in a "no" vote were Israel, Marshall Islands and Palau -- but not American allies in Europe or Canada.

Belarus, Iran and Venezuela abstained.

As the pre-eminent international rights watchdog, the 47-seat U.N. Human Rights Council is to expose human rights abusers and help nations draw up rights legislation.

It would replace the 53-country Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Commission, which in recent years has included some of the world's most notorious rights violators.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton told the assembly that rules for the new council were too weak to prevent rights violators from obtaining seats.

"We did not have sufficient confidence in this text to be able to say that the Human Rights Council will be better than its predecessor," Bolton said. "That said, the United States will work cooperatively with other member states to make the council as strong and effective as it can be."

U.N. General Assembly President Jan Eliasson feared Cuba, which had readied amendments, would open the floor to changes that would doom the resolution. But diplomats said Eliasson and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan telephoned Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque to persuade him to drop the changes.

In the end Cuba voted in favor although it listed as many objections as Bolton and called the council a creation of the United States to "unjustly condemn Third World countries."

"We did not have sufficient confidence in this text to be able to say that the Human Rights Council will be better than its predecessor," Bolton said. "That said, the United States will work cooperatively with other member states to make the council as strong and effective as it can be."

U.N. General Assembly President Jan Eliasson feared Cuba, which had readied amendments, would open the floor to changes that would doom the resolution. But diplomats said Eliasson and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan telephoned Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque to persuade him to drop the changes.

In the end Cuba voted in favor although it listed as many objections as Bolton and called the council a creation of the United States to "unjustly condemn Third World countries."

Cuban Ambassador Rodrigo Malierca said the text was "negotiated behind the scenes to accommodate (Washington's) demands, sacrificing vital interests of the countries of the South."

'WHY BOTHER?'

In response, Bolton told the assembly he could exercise his right of reply, "But on the other hand, why bother?"

Many nations, including Canada and European Union members, as well as major rights groups, share U.S. misgivings. But they rejected Bolton's proposals to postpone or renegotiate the text, fearing they might doom the effort.

Annan first proposed the new council last year as part of sweeping reforms of the world body. But his blueprint was watered down in the resolution.

Eliasson, who negotiated the text over many months, acknowledged that it was a compromise. But he called the council "a body that would advance the founding principles that were initiated by the General Assembly with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights" of 1948.  

"The establishment of the Human Rights Council is a decision whose time has come," he said.

Austrian Ambassador Gerhard Pfanzelter, representing the EU, pledged that EU and associates "commit themselves not to cast their vote for a candidate that is under sanctions imposed by the Security Council for human rights-related reasons." This was one of Bolton's demands not included in the text.

Members of the new council will be elected by the 191-member General Assembly by a majority vote of all nations, not just those present and voting. At present they are approved according to regional slates.

A systematic violator of human rights could be suspended from the council by a two-thirds General Assembly vote. There is no such review now.

The seats would be distributed among regions: 13 for Africa, 13 for Asia, six for Eastern Europe, eight for Latin America and the Caribbean and seven for a group of mainly Western countries, including the United States and Canada.

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