WaPo reports:
Bolton said that a draft charter presented Thursday by the U.N. General Assembly president, Jan Eliasson, was not tough enough to ensure that nations that abuse human rights would be barred from joining the council. He said he was under instructions from Washington to reopen negotiations on the text or postpone deliberations on a new rights body for several months.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and other supporters of the compromise warned that there is no better deal to be struck and that the U.S. strategy could undermine their efforts to create an improved, though imperfect, human rights body. “I think we should not let the better be the enemy of the good,” Annan told reporters Monday in Geneva.
This is disappointing but expected. I don’t agree with the U.S. on this, we look like we are being a bully just to be a bully, and doing nothing more than tarnishing our reputation and impeding the progress this resolution presents.
I prefer not to have Sudan on the Human Rights Committee, don’t you?? Not quite sure how Mr. Bolton can make his arguments with a clear conscience.
2 NYT articles of interest:
U.S. Is Settling Detainee’s Suit in 9/11 Sweep
Refugee Crisis Grows as Darfur War Crosses a Border
1 response so far ↓
1 Owen Barder // Feb 28, 2006 at 11:17 am
Right. The US sought a different outcome in the summit in September 2005 and did not succeed. It is unconscionable for the US now to delay the welcome, if incomplete, reforms that were agreed there; and there is no reason to think that other countries are any more likely to agree with the US position now than they did then.
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