_ From: "Walter Lippmann" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 02:45:03 -0700 To: "CubaNews" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [CubaNews] Washington Angry Over Losing Rights Seat These people can't seem to grasp that many people would resent the heavy-handed tactics Washington used to gain their pyrrhic victory in the vote on Cuba, by 22-20 with 10 abstentions while censuring Israel passed by 49-1. May 4, 2001 Washington Angry Over Losing Rights Seat By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS WASHINGTON, May 3 ‹ American officials, lawmakers and independent human rights groups voiced dismay and indignation today that the United States had lost its seat on the United Nations Human Rights Commission. The critics of the decision offered several factors that contributed to the American defeat, including a campaign by rights- abusing nations to avoid scrutiny, resentment toward the Bush administration for unilateral stances on issues like global warming and missile defense, the growing independence of the European Union and a failure by United States diplomats to do the proper legwork before the vote. The State Department issued a statement saying it was "greatly disappointed in the outcome of the vote." The Human Rights Commission remains an important forum but would be diminished by the absence of the United States, the statement said. "Our commitment and resolve to address human rights problems around the world is a matter of U.S. policy; it will not be affected by this vote." In Congress, leaders from both parties expressed outrage that nations whose records have long been criticized by the United States apparently banded together with European nations to quell Washington's voice. A spokesman for the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, said today's action might force lawmakers to reconsider a carefully wrought agreement worked out between the Senate and the Clinton administration to pay outstanding American dues to the United Nations. The House is expected to take up the issue for the first time next week as part of the State Department authorization bill. "This really hurts the credibility of the U.N. in the Congress," said Mr. Hastert's spokesman, John P. Feehery. Although the vote of the Economic and Social Council, which has authority over the human rights commission, was carried out by secret ballot, lawmakers speculated that nations like Cuba and China ‹ both annual targets of American criticism ‹ had conducted behind-the-scenes lobbying against Washington. Others pointed to the unraveling of an understanding with Europe that the United States would retain one of the three seats reserved for Western nations. "This is a deliberate attempt to punish the United States for its insistence that the commission tell the truth about human rights abuses wherever they occur," said Representative Henry J. Hyde, Republican of Illinois and the chairman of the House International Relations Committee. "This commission includes some of the world's premier human rights violators." Representative Tom Lantos, a California Democrat who is the co- chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, said, "It is absurd that rogue states and chronic human rights abusers such as Libya, Sudan and Cuba remain on the commission and sit in judgment on the human rights practices of others while the United States now stands on the sidelines." Senator Jesse Helms, the North Carolina Republican who, as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee was a major architect of the agreement to end the United States' arrears, said it came as "no surprise that a few European countries maneuvered ‹ in a secret vote ‹ to eliminate the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Commission." But the defeat did catch some administration officials by surprise. American diplomats had received more than 40 written assurances from nations that they would support a seat for the United States, a Republican Congressional official said. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, a former American ambassador to the United Nations, said the administration's failure so far to place a diplomat in her old post, had left the United States vulnerable to diplomatic ambushes. "Somebody wasn't watching the store," Dr. Kirkpatrick said. Without the leadership of an ambassador, she said, there is an atmosphere in which "no one is responsible." Some analysts viewed the vote as a response to the administration's positions on a number of issues ‹ from a treaty on land mines to the International Criminal Court ‹ that have drawn criticism, especially in Europe. The fact that three European nations ‹ France, Sweden and Austria ‹ secured the Western seats signaled a snub of Washington by the European Union, officials said. But others said the Economic and Social Council was heavily weighted toward developing nations that resent the United States' annual criticism against other nations or fear such scrutiny themselves. 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