China May Face Rare Setback At UN Human Rights Meeting

GENEVA, Mar 29, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) A senior US official expressed confidence here Tuesday that China would fail to prevent a resolution condemning its human rights record from being introduced at this year's UN Human Rights Commission.

China has repeatedly benefited in past years from a procedure known as a "no action motion" which has successfully prevented hostile resolutions from being introduced at the UN sessions.

But US assistant secretary of state for human rights, Harold Koh, told reporters here that chances appeared good that the no action motion could be defeated.

"We believe that this year the chance that the no action motion will fail is the greatest since 1995," he said. 1995 was the only year in the last decade when one of the no action motions failed.

"The European Union has already indicated that they plan to oppose the no action motion," Koh added.

Koh said the rotating membership of the 53-person Human Rights Commission, whose six-week session began here last week, complicated efforts to predict the outcome of any vote.

"This year there are many new members of the Commission and so the record of voting in the past is not necessarily a reliable indicator," he said.

The United States announced in January that it planned to introduce a resolution on human rights practices in China. Koh said Washington believed the human rights situation had deteriorated over the last year.

US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright blasted China's human rights record in an address Thursday to the UN body and appealed for international support on a resolution to condemn Beijing.

China predicted earlier Tuesday that a US-sponsored resolution was bound to fail.

"The US side has met with failure seven or eight times, should it continue with such actions it will continually be confronted with failure," foreign ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi said.

((c) 2000 Agence France Presse)