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 News from Around the Americas | February 2006 
US Rejects New UN Human Rights Council Proposal
 Evelyn Leopold - Reuters
| | U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton speaks to an audience during a symposium at Columbia Law School in New York February 25, 2006. (Reuters/Seth Wenig) |
United Nations - The United States on Monday called the proposal for a new U.N. Human Rights Council unacceptable and said it would vote against a draft resolution unless negotiations were reopened.
"We are very disappointed with the draft that was produced last Thursday. We don't think it's acceptable," U.S. Ambassador John Bolton told reporters.
He said his instructions were to reopen negotiations "and to try and correct the manifold deficiencies in the text of the resolution, or alternatively to push off consideration of the resolution for several months to give us more time."
The new council would replace the discredited Geneva-based Human Rights Commission, where a number of rights violating nations have seats.
Bolton said that if U.N. General Assembly President Jan Eliasson, who drew up the compromise proposal after months of debate, put it to a vote this week, the United States would vote "no."
If Eliasson wants a consensus decision, without a vote, he may delay consideration because an objection from a major nation, such as the United States, would weigh heavily.
If he calls for a vote in the General Assembly, where the United States has only one vote among 191 nations, Bolton would lose.
New negotiations could result in a line-by-line parsing of the text. Supporters of the resolution, which include major human rights groups, fear this would open the door to opponents of a new council and produce a deadlock. |
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