UN votes 47 countries onto new human rights body (Roundup)

May 9, 2006, 23:00 GMT

New York - The UN General Assembly, inaugurating a new human rights panel to correct faults in the old one, Tuesday elected the 47 member countries, including Cuba, Russia, China and Saudi Arabia.

Six slots for Eastern Europe took the longest to fill, requiring three ballots before Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Romania joined Russia, Poland and the Czech Republic, which won seats in the first round of voting.

Candidate countries needed a majority of 96 votes from the 191- nation assembly to get elected to the Geneva-based Human Rights Council. A total of 65 countries vied for seats, which are divided among the world's regions.

The new body replaces the Human Rights Commission, widely seen as discredited because countries accused of abuses regularly held seats on it. It was disbanded this year, and the new council is to start meeting in mid-June.

The United States voted against setting up the council when the General Assembly approved it in March, saying it risked being too much like its predecessor - a point US Ambassador John Bolton raised after Cuba won a seat.

'It signals that the tendency of the previous commission may very well now be carried over, as we sadly predicted when we opposed the resolution' that created the council, Bolton said.

He predicted that the US, which did not run for the council, would have more influence as an outsider.

Ahead of the vote, the human rights group UN Watch warned that some of the most 'egregious and systematic human rights violators' would likely be elected to the council.

It published a list of 28 countries it described as abusers of human rights unfit to sit on the council. The General Assembly voted for 17 of the countries on the list, including Russia, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, China, Indonesia and Pakistan.

Putting those countries on the council, UN Watch said, would be an 'ominous sign' that the new council is 'nothing more than the same old commission by another name.'

The General Assembly will decide the terms for the 47 elected members, ranging from one to three years.

Africa's 13 seats went to Ghana, Zambia, Senegal, South Africa, Mali, Mauritius, Morocco, Gabon, Djibouti, Cameroon, Tunisia, Nigeria and Algeria.

Asia's 13 went to India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, South Korea, China, Jordan, the Philippines, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Sri Lanka.

Latin America and the Caribbean has eight seats. The winners: Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, Uruguay, Cuba and Ecuador.

The seven seats for Western Europe and others went to Germany, France, Britain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Finland and Canada.

The US decided not to run this year. One reason given by Washington was that a US candidacy would have to compete with the nine Western European states for the seven seats.

The Assembly adopted the new council under rules that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called disappointing. Annan led the push to require a two-thirds majority vote, or 126 votes, for admission, but the Assembly lowered the bar to 96 votes.

But the performance of new panel members on the council will be subjected to peer review, and if they fail to uphold high human rights standards, they can be ejected by a two-thirds majority vote by assembly members present at the meeting.