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April 25,
2003
Season of the Witch
Jeane Kirkpatrick
Unbound
by COUNTERPUNCH WIRE
Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick Head of
the U.S. Delegation to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights and
Ambassador Kevin E. Moley Permanent Representative to the United
Nations and other International Organizations in Geneva respond
to questions from the press outside the Commission on Human Rights
Palais des Nations Geneva. April 24, 2003
AMBASSADOR MOLEY: We want to give you
the US reaction to Secretary General Annan's speech and there
are a couple of things that we want to specifically comment upon.
In the third paragraph of the speech which I think you all have
a copy of there is a comment or a statement by the Secretary
General "I hope the Coalition will set an example by making
clear that they intend to act strictly within the rules set down
by the Geneva Conventions and the Hague Regulations regarding
the treatment of prisoners of war.." We have not only made
that clear by our words, more importantly we have made that clear
from day one of this conflict through our actions, and quite
frankly we find it odd at best that the Secretary General would
feel that he had to bring this to our attention.
Secondly, and I'm sure that Ambassador
Kirkpatrick is going to want to comment as well. The fourth paragraph
begins: "The decision to go to war without specific authorization
by the Security Council,"- and I'll repeat - "The decision
to go to war without specific authorization by the Security Council."
The Secretary General more than any single person should know
that there is specific authorization. Specifically Security Council
resolutions 678, 687 and 1441. And so this is an egregious misstatement
of the facts of our going to war in Iraq. And Ambassador Kirkpatrick
I'm sure may want to comment as well.
AMBASSADOR KIRKPATRICK: Yes, I do want
to comment. I want to say that it is a misstatement, quite simply,
as the Secretary General obviously knows. The Secretary General
knows resolutions 678 and 687 and 1441. 687 contains the terms
of the cease-fire which was negotiated at the interruption of
the first Gulf War. And he is perfectly aware of the fact that
Iraq has not ever fulfilled those terms of the cease-fire. The
cease-fire was a conditional cease-fire. It has been the position
of the United States from the beginning and it has been the position
of the Secretary General as a matter of record that Iraq never
fulfilled the terms of that cease-fire.
And on an earlier occasion when someone
raised a question about the legitimacy of the US and the UK using
force to protect the Iraqi Kurds by over-flights, the Secretary
General himself it was authorized under resolution 687. Of course
President George W. Bush affirmed this again during his initial
presentation before the Security Council. The Security Council
responded to that presentation by unanimously adopting resolution
1441, which described the material breach in which Iraq was engaged.
So it is a serious mistake on the part of the Secretary General.
One can only assume that he had reasons for doing it. He didn't
just say that, he said the decision to go to war without specific
authorization by the security council "has created deep
divisions that will need to be bridged if we are to deal effectively
not just with the aftermath in Iraq but with other major challenges."
It is of course the US position -- and my personal position --
that the French created deep divisions when they announced that
they would veto any resolution which was passed by the Security
Council that dealt with the question of use of force in Iraq
at that time. The French President Jacques Chirac reiterated
this view several times, and effectively ended the use of the
Security Council as an arena for negotiating some kind of settlement
to that conflict. So I think this is very inaccurate and not
consistent with views that the Secretary General himself has
expressed on other occasions and not an accurate description
of what actually transpired. I think this is very objectionable.
QUESTION: May I ask, why do you think
the Secretary General said this and will there be any sort of
repercussions by the United States against the United Nations.
The US is not particularly happy with the UN role in this whole
issue.
MOLEY: I would simply say that we are
here to set the record straight in terms of the comments made
by the Secretary General this morning here at the Human Rights
Commission and any other reactions in respect to this would come
from the White House or the State Department in Washington.
QUESTION: We have heard that perhaps
the resolution on Iraq could be considered today. Will that take
place, will there be any consideration...
MOLEY: I don't believe that will be considered
until tomorrow. Under the 24 hour rule which I believe was imposed
and you will correct me if this isn't the case, but I believe
that the 24-hour rule would not permit it to be taken up until
tomorrow.
QUESTION: What is the reason for the
United States to try to limit the mandate of the special representative
to just the crimes under Saddam Hussein and not any others that
might have occurred since?
MOLEY: Well, I don't think that is quite
accurate. We are not in fact delimiting the mandate from the
original resolution. And it is clear, common sense would tell
you, that crimes of the regime that has been replaced were the
crimes that have been the subject of the rapporteur. Even though
this is the UN we must at times at least retain some degree of
logic in our deliberations.
QUESTION: But does the US see any need
for a special investigator given that Human Rights Watch is presently
in Iraq trying to secure what they say are mass grave sites so
that forensic experts can get in there and investigate. They
would like to see human rights monitors on the ground to try
and preserve some of the stuff and do a thorough investigation.
Does the US see any role for such human rights monitors.
MOLEY: I think that is a subject for
on-going discussion. I don't think we are in the position at
the moment to make that decision here.
KIRKPATRICK: I think that the United
States has a very large interest in having the evidence concerning
the crimes against humanity of the Saddam Hussein regime preserved
and investigated.
QUESTION: Will you vote for this resolution?
KIRKPATRICK: We don't have the final
form of the resolution, so we can't comment on whether we are
willing to vote on something we haven't seen in the final form.
MOLEY: We are in discussions with the
EU and hopefully it will come to a successful conclusion as well
as with others and we would hope that that would enable us to
do so, but as the Ambassador has just said, it is not fully cooked
yet.
QUESTION: You said earlier that you have
made it clear from day one that you would respect the Geneva
Conventions, the Hague etc, but a couple of weeks ago when (NAME
INAUDIBLE) was asked questions at Central Command in Doha about
the issue of occupying power, the response was, well we are not
at that stage yet, it's a liberating force.
MOLEY: You have mixed metaphors there.
You asked me about the Geneva Convention and the Hague and I
would reply as I did earlier, we have been fully, fully in conformity
and intend to be since day one, not only by virtue of our words,
but by virtue of our actions on the ground that demonstrate that.
QUESTION: So there is no separate occupying
or liberating force category?
MOLEY: We are simply saying that the
issue of an occupying power has not yet been dealt with. Once
again the situation is still quite fluid. We will come to that,
and presumably come to it quickly. But there should be no question
-- certainly no question in the mind of the Secretary General
-- that we need to make any clearer than we already have, and
have been on the record repeatedly as being in conformance and
wanting to be in conformance in every way with the Geneva Conventions.
QUESTION: I am just curious, can I ask
you something generally about the Human Rights Commission? How
has the US viewed this year's session, because we have seen some
countries escape censure, and at least human rights groups are
quite upset about Zimbabwe and Sudan.
KIRKPATRICK: I'd like to say something
about that if I may, speaking of human rights groups. I was very
shocked this year to learn that Human Rights Watch has never
occupied itself with Zimbabwe which is surely one of the deep
broad problems in human rights violations in our times. And I
mention this to suggest that it is often the case that serious
persons and groups skip some and focus on others. Part of the
reason for that is that there a good many serious human rights
violations in the contemporary world and even very serious people
often do not divide their time equally. We try to cover all the
serious human rights violations in our discussions and our decisions
and we did indeed address a good many of them this year.
MOLEY: In our State Department reports
put out annually we do, country by country, an evaluation of
their human rights conditions, so we take this very seriously.
But let me say something that Ambassador Kirkpatrick can't say
and that is that our commitment to human rights should be demonstrated
by the fact that the President chose to name one of our most
distinguished diplomats and scholars Ambassador Kirkpatrick to
be the head of our delegation here signaling our commitment as
we return to the Human Rights Commission -- as you know we were
not on the Commission last year -- so we have learned a few things
and no doubt we will be looking at ways to improve the performance
of this Commission in concert with other serious minded countries
that are on the Commission. But there are a lot of countries
on the Commission who are only on the Commission to protect themselves
by virtue of their own egregious deplorable human rights situations
in their countries. And I will specifically name Zimbabwe and
Libya and Sudan and others in that category. And we have heard
that North Korea is intending to be a candidate next month in
May to become a member, which would be, as in the case of Zimbabwe,
another outrage to the conditions of human rights around the
world.
QUESTION: What about China? China has
slipped through the cracks because some groups have said that
the US just hasn't put the pressure to bring China up this year.
Is that because the US needs China for North Korea in the negotiations?
MOLEY: Let me say that there is no linkage
in effect there. Certainly one looks at China's position on the
Security Council on other issues that have been of importance
to the United States in recent times including Iraq and one would
be hard put to suggest that there was any linkage. The fact of
the matter is, in China's case, as is reported in our State Department's
own country by country report, there are serious human rights
violations taking place in China. There has been an on-going
dialogue however between very high level State Department officials
who are fully engaged with China. And there has been some progress.
Not as much as we would like. We would like to see more. One
of the interesting things and I commented on this the other day,
with respect to the recent outbreak of SARS, we have seen just
in recent days a change of position by the new government, and
there is a new government in Beijing, headed by Hu Jintao, which
has declared that they must be absolutely open. We hope that
this kind of transparency will translate into further progress
on the human rights front.
QUESTION: The Secretary General in his
speech did seem to indicate and criticize I believe the Human
Rights Commission for being weak and that it should be stronger.
How do you react to that?
MOLEY: Well I would add our voice to
that of the Secretary General and in fact the High Commissioner
Sergio Viera de Mello who in an article in the Wall Street Journal
on April 22 himself decried the fact that the Human Rights Commission
did not seem to be taking the issue of human rights serious,
and I am paraphrasing, you will have to go to his own remarks
for a direct quote. But he was very, very critical of the performance.
KIRKPATRICK: I must say that we also
addressed this issue and predicted that we would be unhappy with
the final outcome across the board because there are so many
countries who are members of the Human Right Commission who are
not themselves serious practitioners of respect for human rights
in their own countries and their own policies. That was a major
emphasis in the first speech that I delivered here, the US opening
speech at the Human Rights Commission.
QUESTION: Some NGOs are accusing the
United States of not having any leadership this year and of,
after your absence last year, failing to pass resolutions not
only on China but to have been more proactive as far as Chechnya
is concerned...
KIRKPATRICK: I want to say something
about that too. Anyone who imagines that the United States is
not being proactive when we do not ourselves sponsor a resolution
is making a mistake. It is often the case inside the United Nations,
not only on Human Rights issues, but on many issues, that it
is more effective to cooperate with other countries and to sometimes
let them take the lead. Sometimes it is better for them to take
the lead, sometimes it is better for us to take the lead. We
have to make judgements about that issue by issue and year by
year. But I think it is a mistake to imagine that because we
didn't take the lead on the resolution that we did not act. We
were, for example, very active on Sudan. And we did not take
the lead. We ended as one of the sponsors of the resolution.
And we worked actively on it. So don't fall for that line. That
is just not an accurate way to judge.
MOLEY: And we did take the lead in some
cases that were unique to us in our position on the Commission.
Belarus is an example. We are not saying our performance has
been perfect either, but the fact is we are back on. We have
made a serious commitment and we worked hard and we are going
to work hard next year as well.
QUESTION: I am just curious. I see that
Sudan today is asking the US to be removed from the list of terrorist
countries. I don't know if you can comment on whether the White
House...
KIRKPATRICK: The list of terrorist countries
is, you know, it does not depend on what a nation requests. There
would not be a list of states sponsoring terrorism if it depended
on the requests of the governments concerned. I think the United
States would like very much to see the government of Sudan improve
its behavior. We would like to see it improve its behavior in
a number of domains. And so far we have not felt that it has
done so. I would repeat, if you want to know the US position
on a given country, the best thing to do is to go to our human
rights country reports. They are serious, they are good, and
they are up-to-date. They are revised on an annual basis. So
look there.
QUESTION: Could I just ask you one question,
it may be a little out of the range, but there has been a lot
of criticism of the United States in terms of the deterioration
of human rights law, international law specifically, with Guantanamo
Bay and so forth, and the...
MOLEY: We don't accept that characterization
at all, not at all.
QUESTION: The question is that the US
has always been held up as a model of the rule of law and propriety
and has been an encouragement to smaller states to follow this
model and there is a feeling that there is an erosion of that
by the behavior of the United States.
KIRKPATRICK: I think that that is a misplaced
feeling. It is a feeling and not an informed opinion. I know
one thing. I know the prisoners in Guantanamo are being treated
under the laws of combatants. And that is quite different from
the Geneva Conventions. They were arrested in the course of seeking
to kill Americans in an ongoing war.
MOLEY: Specifically I would suggest that
if someone thinks we should be
treating them differently they would
in fact be making up law or misapplying the law. The fact of
the matter is that these are illegal combatants, unlawful combatants.
And they are being treated as such. If someone wants them treated
otherwise they are in fact misapplying the law. And so I would
suggest that the fact is that we are in compliance in the strictest
sense with humanitarian law, with the law of war, and accept
our responsibilities as such. As a consequence we remain the
model. We are not without fault, but we are the model.
KIRKPATRICK: I'd like to make a point
because of the role in the Human Rights Commission of Cuba. You
know Cuba does not permit the Red Cross or any other objective
international group to visit prisoners in its prisons. The United
States on the other hand gives the Red Cross broad access to
the prisoners that we hold in Guantanamo. There is only one part
of Cuba that there is any access for an international humanitarian
agency, and that is Guantanamo Bay and the prisoners held there.
Today's
Features
Anthony
Gancarski
When Young Mothers Die in Combat
Chris
Floyd
Desolation Row: Bush's Barbarians Teach
by Example
Marjorie
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William
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Dave Marsh
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Binoy
Kampmark
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David Vest
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Standard
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Andrew
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Steve
Perry
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Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East
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