GENEVA, April 25: The United States on Friday blocked international efforts to allow a United Nations Human Rights Commission investigator of crimes under the former Iraqi government to look at the post-Saddam period.
Although the Commission asked the investigator to produce a report in the next few months, it agreed — under what diplomats said was strong US pressure — that this should focus on what had happened during the long rule of the ousted president.
Some countries had wanted the investigator to have a more open field that might have allowed him to consider the behaviour of US and British troops now controlling Iraq after last months’ invasion.
Wrapping up its annual six-week session in Geneva, the 53-member body passed by a large majority vote a resolution condemning what it called oppression and widespread terror during President Saddam’s two decades in absolute power.
A total of 29 countries joined the United States and Britain in voting for the resolution, but China stayed away and Russia abstained.
In all, 11 other countries, including Syria and India, joined Russia and six more, like China, were absent for the vote.
Three — Malaysia, Zimbabwe and Cuba — voted against, and a Havana envoy said the resolution was shameful at a time when Iraq was under “foreign occupation.”
The resolution recorded “strong condemnation of the systematic, widespread and extremely grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian law by the government of Iraq over many years...”.
These, it said, had resulted in “all-pervasive repression and oppression sustained by broad-based discrimination and widespread terror”.
CRITICISM OF US, BRITAIN: Some countries had argued for a wording that could be read as criticizing the US-led invasion which left hundreds of civilians dead and wrecked much of the country’s economy.
But this was fiercely opposed by the two invading states. Instead, the resolution called on “all parties” to the conflict “to abide strictly by their obligations under international humanitarian law...”.
US ambassador Kevin Moley on Thursday strongly criticized UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan for telling the Commission the two invaders should make clear that they would observe the rules of war on the treatment of prisoners.
But the main fight was over the investigator — special rapporteur in diplomatic jargon. After weeks of backstage diplomaticking, the Commission agreed to extend his job for another year and asked him to make an interim report on rights observance in the country.
This report, the resolution said, should focus “on newly available information about violations of human rights and international law....over many years” by the ousted government.
Diplomats said earlier that several countries on the Commission wanted the investigator, Andreas Mavromattis of Cyprus, to look at how the US and British were behaving in Iraq and whether they had committed offences in the war.
A first draft of the resolution said only that Mavromattis should report on “the situation of human rights in Iraq” which the diplomats said would have given him scope to look beyond Saddam’s rule.
Moley on Thursday rejected complaints from the New York- based Human Rights Watch that Washington wanted to limit the Cypriot lawyer’s mandate, arguing it would be illogical for it to go beyond “the crimes of the regime that has been replaced.” —Reuters