U.S. OUT OF U.N. NOW:

Resolution at U.N. human rights body avoids condemning Cuba (JONATHAN FOWLER, March 26, 2003, Associated Press)

A resolution presented Wednesday to the top U.N. human rights body does not include a condemnation of Cuba's record, a rare move that immediately drew protests from rights campaigners.

The activist groups charged that just last week Cuba arrested scores of dissidents, accusing them of conspiring with American diplomats in Cuba to encourage opposition to the communist government.

The annual meeting of the 53-nation U.N. Human Rights Commission has censured the communist island for its lack of democracy and free speech every year over the past decade except 1998.

But in wording that will likely draw U.S. protest as well, the draft measure produced by Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Peru and Uruguay simply asks Cuba to accept a visit by a U.N. monitor appointed earlier this year by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. [...]

A spokesman for the U.S. mission to U.N. European offices in Geneva said only that the United States supported the efforts of the sponsoring nations to address the human rights situation in Cuba.

"The United States needs a resolution against Cuba like a fish needs water," Perez Roque, the foreign minister, told reporters in Geneva last week.

Washington is running out of ways to justify its 40-year-old embargo against Cuba, which most other nations oppose, he said.

It should not be necessary to explain a praiseworthy revulsion.
-Mark Helprin, Chanukah in the Age of Guys and Dolls Posted by Orrin Judd at March 26, 2003 10:34 PM