BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

17/05/2007

Canada leads battle to keep Belarus off UN rights council

Steven Edwards, CanWest News service

UNITED NATIONS - Canada was at the centre of fierce last-minute lobbying Wednesday to persuade countries to vote against Belarus in today's elections to fill 14 seats on the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Canadian UN diplomats joined diplomats from the United States, Britain and France weeks ago to spread the word the former Soviet republic should be kept off what the UN bills as its premier arbiter of human rights.

Some western countries and human rights activists have also raised alarm bells about several other hopeful Council members - including Angola, Egypt and Qatar.

Monitoring groups say the human rights records of all four range from poor to appalling - while Canada has made repeated public statements against Belarus, and pressured Egypt in the espionage trial of a Egyptian-Canadian national who says his "confession" was extracted by torture.

"There has been a lot of contact here in New York," said one diplomat close to the campaign against Belarus. "Representations have been made not only at the ambassadorial level, but also in (technical) experts' meetings. More than 150 countries have been lobbied when you add in appeals sent out directly from capitals."

Another official said Canada sat down with the other three and "divvied up the world" to determine who should lobby whom.

The 192 countries of the UN General Assembly will vote on the candidacies of Angola, Belarus, Egypt and Qatar, as well as 12 others seeking to join Canada on the 47-member Council.

Angola, Egypt and Qatar are running unopposed to fill seats allotted to their respective regions and, under the UN's election rules for the council, need only bare-majority support of assembly members.

With regional backing for the trio already assured, it's unlikely they'll fail to make up the required difference through the common UN practice of political horse-trading for votes.

Belarus is joined by Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in a race to fill two vacant spots reserved for Eastern Europe.

Insiders say Belarus's credentials as a former Soviet Union member that continues to take a strong-anti-western stance have ensured it support from both Russia and much of the non-aligned movement - a group of more than 100 mainly developing countries that themselves are largely skeptical of the West.

"In light of the deeply entrenched repression in these four countries, they are not qualified for council membership," said Hillel Neuer, a Montrealer who serves as executive director of UN Watch, a monitoring group based, like the council, in Geneva.

The ballot is the first since the inaugural elections last year filled the entire council after the General Assembly established the body to succeed the UN's discredited Human Rights Commission.

Among the commission's biggest flaws: infiltration by human rights abuser states that spent their time deflecting criticism of themselves from the international record. The UN said the successor body would re-inject integrity into one of the central pillars of its human rights monitoring infrastructure - but that is now being questioned more than ever.

"The General Assembly faces a simple question," said Peggy Hicks of New York-based Human Rights Watch. "Does it take seriously its own standards and decisions? If so, it has no alternative but to reject the candidacies of Belarus and Egypt."

Foreign Minister Peter MacKay has joined other international critics in calling Belarus's presidential election "flawed," and denounced the country's "continued imprisonment of democratic supporters."

Last month, MacKay said Canada had repeatedly "raised the issue of torture" with Egypt following claims by Mohammed Essam Ghoneim al-Attar, a 31-year-old Egyptian who holds Canadian citizenship, that Egyptian security services tortured him into falsely confessing to having spied for Israel.

After a Cairo court sentenced al-Attar to 15 years imprisonment, Canada called on Egypt to launch an impartial investigation into the convicted man's claims.

The standing Senate committee on human rights released a report last week that called on Ottawa to use its membership of the council to "make a difference" by "ensuring that the procedures support the furtherance of human rights."

In the only other contest today, Denmark, Italy and the Netherlands will vie for two western European seats. Other countries on the slate include South Africa, India, Bolivia and Nicaragua.

While membership rules make it tougher to get a seat on the council than they did on the now-defunct commission, they're not as tough as Canada and other western countries wanted. Several countries with poor human rights records currently hold seats, including Algeria, China, Cuba, Nigeria, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia - although Algeria will leave after this year.

Citing a shortfall in membership thresholds, the United States has refused to stand for election. Canada will serve through to 2009.

Source:

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=7861d303-3b4b-462a-8950-7fb08982a37b&k=49601