NYT: U.N. Approves New Human Rights Council Despite U.S. Objection

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U.N. Approves New Human Rights Council Despite U.S. Objection
By WARREN HOGE
Published: March 15, 2006


UNITED NATIONS, March 15 — With the United States in virtually lone opposition, the United Nations overwhelmingly approved a new Human Rights Council today to replace the widely discredited Human Rights Commission.

The vote in the 191-nation General Assembly was 170 to 4, with three abstentions....

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Secretary General Kofi Annan, who first proposed the council a year ago, hailed the decision, saying, "This gives the United Nations the chance — a much-needed chance — to make a new beginning in its work for human rights around the world."

But John R. Bolton, the United States ambassador, said the proposed council was "not sufficiently improved" over the commission, which has been faulted for permitting notorious rights abusers to become members.

"We must not let the victims of human rights abuses throughout the world think that U.N. member states were willing to settle for 'good enough,' " Mr. Bolton said in a statement after the vote. "We must not let history remember us as the architects of a council that was a 'compromise' and merely 'the best we could do' rather than one that ensured doing 'all we could do' to promote human rights."...


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/15/international/15cnd-nations.html?hp&ex=1142485200&en=2f0627a1f8116328&ei=5094&partner=homepage