U.S. Loss of Seat on U.N. Human Rights Commission Follows Threat to Veto Mideast Resolutions

By Ian Williams

In March, pretty much without notice, the U.S. announced it would veto any resolution on the Middle East, even as it was actively negotiating the text of a resolution with allies and the Non-Aligned group. At the beginning of May, the U.S. lost its bid for one of the “West European and Other Group” seats on the U.N. Human Rights Committee (HRC). The events were indeed connected.

An administration that thinks that Cuban human rights are an international issue, but that Israeli behavior in the occupied territories is a bilateral affair, to be negotiated between the perpetrator and the victim, clearly is overdue for a wakeup call.

It is true, of course, that some of those who voted against the U.S. were not the purest of parties. However—although you would never guess it from the American media—the U.S. candidacy actually was defeated by France, Austria and Sweden, not by Sudan, which was returned unopposed for an African seat. And while France’s realpolitik sometimes is questionable, Sweden in particular has a much less hypocritical record than the U.S. on human rights, showing itself to be fair in its condemnation of all human rights abusers.

The reasons for the U.S. defeat are complex, but the Middle East certainly does figure strongly in its loss of the “middle-ground” seats. Both the U.N. Economic and Social Commission, and the Human Rights Committee, which it elects, have far too many regimes represented whose human rights records are somewhat spotty. As well as Sudan, among Arab nations Syria, Algeria, Libya and Saudi Arabia are members.

A common theme across the spectrum of delegations, however, was Washington’s “Cuba can do no right and Israel can do no wrong approach”—particularly its threat to veto any resolution which in any way criticizes Israel. Capitol Hill may think that consistency is a virtue a Superpower can do without, but in the outside world people notice when the message is “Do as I say, not do as I do!”

Also in the minds of delegations as they cast their vote was the fact that each time a laboriously negotiated deal is agreed on between the U.S. and its fellow U.N. members to unlock some of the $1.7 billion Washington owes in back dues, Congress adds new conditions, none of which are entirely rational. No other country conditions its payments this way—and the U.N. owes many middle-ground members large sums for peacekeeping operations because of unpaid U.S. dues.

The U.S. candidacy actually was defeated by France, Austria and Sweden.

The U.S. assumed that it could rely on the promises it had to support its election to the HRC. A secret ballot can deliver surprises, however—which is why, of course, so many governments represented on the committee do not want to extend the opportunity to their citizens.

In addition, human rights is a touchy issue at the U.N. Recently Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson had announced she was leaving because of her frustration with the bureaucratic and political obstacles to her job. Then she reversed her decision. Informed sources see this as her contribution to Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s re-election campaign—and to the cause of human rights at the U.N.

Until his election is confirmed, there is no way that Secretary-General Annan could have appointed anyone of any stature or independence to replace her. She has annoyed Russians and Chinese with her forthright stands. Strangely enough, however, her trenchant criticisms of Israeli actions in the West Bank and Gaza have not produced a backlash from the usual suspects in Washington.

It is likely that being a former president of Ireland gives her a strong natural American constituency that the astute operators in the Israel Lobby would think twice about annoying gratuitously. In any case, her agreement to stay gives Annan the opportunity to make a serious appointment next year, unencumbered with worries about vetoes. And, in the meantime, with all the Security Council members signaling support for a second term for him, he seems assured of job continuity.

France and the Western Sahara

Just to prove that the U.S. has no monopoly on hypocrisy, it is worth looking at the French attitude to Western Sahara, where at the end of April the Security Council once again rolled over support for the peacekeeping force there. While the U.S. has threatened a veto against any Security Council attempt to enforce U.N. decisions against Israel, France is effectively doing the same on behalf of Morocco.

It is now over a decade since U.N. peacekeepers moved in to supervise the peace plan based on the referendum, and exasperation at the steady drain on U.N. resources is mounting. Security Council members are more openly critical of Morocco than ever before.

From the beginning, the Moroccans have made it plain that their cooperation in the referendum on independence depends on their ability to stack the voters’ lists in their favor. For the usual reasons of diplomatic etiquette and pusillanimity, most leading members of the Security Council ignored explicit statements to this effect from Rabat, pretending that Moroccan stonewalling was merely good-faith quibbling about details.

When the efforts to stack the voters’ register failed, however, Morocco reverted to its most consistent weapon, procrastination, while trying to set aside previous Security Council resolutions on the referendum in favor of an unspecified negotiated settlement. To be fair, they have not met too much resistance from other members who did not, in former Secretary of State James Baker’s memorable words about the Balkans, “have a dog in the fight.”

Baker himself, as Kofi Annan’s special representative, has also been visibly exasperated by the failure to move forward, and his thoughts, more diplomatically expressed in U.N.-speak, appear in the latest secretary-general’s report: “Regrettably, I cannot report progress toward overcoming the obstacles to the implementation of the settlement plan,” Baker wrote. “I do believe, however, that substantial progress has been made toward determining whether the government of Morocco…is prepared to offer or support some devolution of authority for all the inhabitants and former inhabitants of the Territory, that is genuine, substantial and in keeping with international norms.”

However, Ahmed Bukhari, Polisario’s U.N. representative, holds that there can be no compromise on the referendum. That is the peace plan agreed to by the Security Council and, Bukhari maintains, if the U.N. reneges on it, then Polisario will have no option but to resume hostilities. At the very least they brandish the prospect of the “Cyprus syndrome” setting in, in which the U.N. provides expensive cover for an inherently unstable situation for many decades.

In keeping with a decade-long tradition, faced with impasse on the main point, the Security Council resolution faces firmly in both directions: “reiterating full support” for the settlement plan and referendum, while holding the “expectation” that the parties will “continue to try to resolve the multiple problems relating to implementation of the Settlement Plan, and try to agree upon a mutually acceptable political solution to their dispute.”

In other words, since Morocco won’t give ground, it hopes that Polisario will agree to a deal without a referendum and without independence. There are only a few more months before someone’s bluff is called.

The Iraq-Kuwait “Situation”

There is, of course, no American suggestion that what U.N. resolutions still call the “situation between Iraq and Kuwait” should be left to bilateral negotiations between the two sides. Obviously concluding from their observations of U.S. diplomacy that inconsistency and illogicality are the hallmarks of superpower status, the Russian delegation to the U.N. has been fighting against a British draft resolution on Iraqi sanctions that offers much of what they had previously demanded.

Under former President Bill Clinton and his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, Washington was quite prepared to regard the suffering of ordinary Iraqis as acceptable collateral damage in the struggle against Saddam Hussain. Under the new U.S. administration, there is now at least the realization that sanctions are eroding in the face of world perceptions of their harm to Iraqi civilians.

The new British draft gets around many of the problems of unilateral holds, usually placed by the U.S., on oil-for-food contracts—currently $3.7 billion worth. Everything would be free for trade except items on the military or dual-use list, and even then, the resolution provides for a “line item” veto which would allow the rest of a contract to go through if a sanctions committee member objected to just one or two items.

In fact, several U.N. insiders suggest that many of those holds are not necessarily the result of American malice, but are due more to the muddled and tortuous processes of Washington bureaucracy, where any such decisions have to go through multiple committees, none of which operate at high speed.

Almost certainly, the innovation in the resolution which would upset the Iraqis most is the clause to bring Iraqi oil sales to Jordan, Syria and Turkey under the oil-for-food program. The revenue then would have to be paid into the U.N.-administered account, thus cutting off one of the main sources of illicit foreign exchange for the Iraqi regime. To alleviate problems with the recipient countries, who all have been the beneficiaries of below-market oil prices, the resolution proposes raising the U.N. “cut” for compensation from its current 25 percent to 30 percent.

And while the resolution would allow civilian flights in and out of Iraq, they would have to be inspected at the points of departure and arrival outside Iraq. This amounts to a tightening of current controls. Tighter control of the border for examination for military equipment, as envisaged in the resolution, would be equally unpalatable to Baghdad, which still is refusing entry to U.N. inspectors—meaning that, according to current resolutions, sanctions remain.

On this issue, the Russians have decided that if a superpower like the U.S. can do regular diplomatic somersaults at the behest of one Middle Eastern state, then Moscow can jump through hoops to make another Mideast regime happy. Accordingly, the Russian delegation insisted on renewing the same oil-for-food resolution which they had protested about in the past, and opposed the new resolution even though it met many of their previous objections to sanctions. The Iraq lobby in Moscow can take the credit.

In the face of Russian opposition, the old “oil-for-food resolution was rolled over for a month while the U.S. and Britain worked on Moscow's objections. It now is scheduled for a vote by the end of June.

Ian Williams is a free-lance journalist based at the United Nations.