Cuba tweaks US at opening of UN rights council

Cuba tweaks U.S. at opening of UN rights council
The Associated Press
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 2006

GENEVA Cuba on Tuesday welcomed the opening of the new UN Human Rights
Council, praising both its own election as a founding member of the
47-nation body and the exclusion of the United States, which declined to
stand as a candidate.

Cuba, which has been criticized by the United States and rights groups
for its record, said its victory in the May election was a reward for
its humanitarian efforts, including work by its doctors in 70 other
countries and free surgery by Cuban eye specialists for patients from
elsewhere in the Caribbean and Latin America.

"Today is a particularly symbolic day," Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez
Roque said. "Cuba is a founding member of the Human Rights Council and
the United States is not. The absence of the United States is the defeat
of lies; it is the moral punishment for the haughtiness of an empire."

Velia de Pirro, political counselor at the U.S Mission, dismissed Cuba's
comments.

"Cuba, rather than explain how it intends to comply with its pledge,
chose instead to engage in gratuitous and unfounded attacks against the
United States," Pirro said. "Perhaps it is because those pledges sound
hollow, especially in the ears of the Cuban people."

The United States opposed the creation of the council, saying that it
did not do enough to improve upon the discredited Human Rights
Commission that preceded it, and declined to run for a seat. But
Washington has promised to help the council succeed.

The Cuban foreign minister said the election of council members came at
a time when the United States was conducting "an unjust and illegal" war
in Iraq that was "concocted to steal a country's oil and give away
sumptuous contracts to a group of cronies of the president."

Japan, Canada, Finland and Switzerland were also among those chosen to
sit on the 47-nation body. The first meeting of the council runs through
June 30.

Human rights groups say they are still concerned about the makeup of the
new council. Cuba, Saudi Arabia, China and Russia won seats, despite
their poor human rights records, although others, notably Iran, were
defeated.

Russia, criticized for its actions in Chechnya but never condemned by
the now-defunct commission, said that no country was absolutely free of
human rights violations.

Deputy Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi of China said his country was making
greater efforts to promote social justice and protect disadvantaged groups.

"China is the world's largest developing country," Yang said. "It faces
numerous problems left over from the past and mounting pressure posed by
a vast population, shortage of resources and environmental degradation.
This means that progress in human rights and other areas in China will
be a long- term endeavor."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/20/news/rights.php