Subject: Re: UN Veto Reveals Bush Administration's Contempt for Human Rights
From: "Fatha -Jack" *****@twat.com
Date: 5/6/2004 6:01 AM Eastern Daylight Time
Message-id: <c7d2e3$sgq$0@pita.alt.net>


"Jei" <jei@horus.hut.fi> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.58.0405061250480.15639@horus.hut.fi...

http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0404-03.htm

Published on Wednesday, April 4, 2001 in Foreign Policy In Focus

UN Veto Reveals Bush Administration's Contempt for Human Rights
by Stephen Zunes

The U.S. veto of a UN Security Council resolution calling for the
deployment of unarmed monitors to the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza
Strip demonstrates the new administration's contempt for human rights. The
United States was the only country to vote against the resolution, which
came before the Security Council on March 28 after five days of tortuous
negotiations that moderated the wording of the original draft. Still, this
was not enough for the U.S., which vetoed its first UN Security Council
resolution in five years.

The call for international monitors has grown over the past six months as
reports by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Israeli
group B'tselem have documented a pattern of gross and systematic human
rights violations by Israeli occupation forces against the Palestinian
population. These have included detention without charge, torture,
extrajudicial killings, rocket and mortar attacks against civilian
targets, demolition of Palestinian homes, restrictions of movement, and
numerous acts of collective punishment.

Bush administration officials claim that monitors should not be deployed
without Israel's consent. However, the monitors would not be going to
Israel. Instead they would be assigned to Israeli-occupied Palestinian
territory and areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority, so no Israeli
consent is required. The recently vetoed UN resolution did not call for a
peacekeeping force but rather for a team of monitors to observe and report
on human rights abuses.

Although claims and counterclaims have been made by the propaganda
machinery on both sides of the issue, providing an internationally
sanctioned, neutral monitoring group was a very modest proposal. It could
have shed some light on the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict and could
have served as a deterrent against further violence and repression. The
U.S. veto raises the question: What does the Bush administration fear
about what such a monitoring group might reveal?

Perhaps there was concern that the monitors might note how U.S. military
hardware--ostensibly sent to Israel for that country's legitimate security
needs--was actually being used for attacks against civilians. Perhaps
there was fear of raising awareness that U.S. arms sent to Israel--like
U.S. arms sent to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, and other Middle
Eastern allies of the United States--are not furthering peace and
security, but rather are promoting violence and repression. These arms
shipments to repressive governments in the Middle East bring in billions
of dollars to American arms exporters, which would be in jeopardy if human
rights considerations were taken into account. Whatever the reason, the
veto has put the U.S. government at odds with almost the entire
international community.

It's particularly disappointing to human rights activists that most
congressional Democrats have declined to criticize the Republican
administration's action at the UN. Even members of the Human Rights Caucus
in the House of Representatives have not questioned the veto. With no
pressure coming from Capitol Hill, the Bush administration will have
little incentive to change its anti-human rights stance in the Middle East
and elsewhere.

Wednesday's veto may be just the beginning of the Bush administration's
efforts to restrict UN efforts to defend human rights. President George W.
Bush's appointee as U.S. representative to the United Nations is John
Negroponte who, as ambassador to Honduras during the 1980s, covered up
widespread human rights abuses by U.S.-trained Honduran army units, and
withheld from Congress evidence of large-scale human rights violations by
the U.S.-backed government.

Public opinion polls indicate that the vast majority of Americans believe
that human rights are important and should be a major focus of U.S.
foreign policy, even if the perpetrator of human rights violations is an
important U.S. ally. Thus far, however, as with popular concerns about the
environment, the Bush administration appears quite willing to ignore the
sentiments of the American public.

It will be very difficult for the United States to speak out against human
rights abuses in Iraq, Iran, China, or any other country as long as it
protects its allies from international criticism or scrutiny. Global
leadership requires that principles sometimes must be placed above
ideology. Otherwise, the United States will find itself with fewer friends
and a growing number of enemies in an increasingly violent world.

Stephen Zunes <zunes@usfca.edu> is Middle East and North Africa editor for
Foreign Policy In Focus and an associate professor of Politics and chair
of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco.

Copyright © 2001 IRC and IPS

Who gives a monkeys-toss what the UN says now days???

the wankers & do as they please.

countless UN resolutions over the years. The UN is a non-effective body &
unless something drastic happens soon, they shall cease to exist.

FJ - OFM#20 - BNP!!!