Agence France Presse / Kate Millar
GENEVA, April 18 (AFP) - China again headed off a move Tuesday to censure it's human rights record by stifling a US-sponsored resolution at the UN Human Rights Commission.
US efforts to pass an international condemnation of China's record failed when Beijing managed to gain enough support to prevent the resolution even being presented.
China used a procedural "no action motion" to thwart a debate on the issue, the tactic it has repeatedly used over the last decade, except for 1995.
But Afghanistan, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cuba, Iraq, Myanmar, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Sudan were among others who did face censure.
Twenty-two members of the 53 member UN panel voted in favour of the no-action motion, 18 opposed, 12 abstained, and one delegate was absent.
Later China thanked the countries that helped it defeat the draft resolution.
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as expressing "admiration and thanks" to the 22 countries.
Putting a brave face on the failure to introduce the resolution, US officials said they had at least succeeded in drawing attention to China's human rights record.
Despite supporting China's entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the United States sponsored a text expressing concern at "continuing reports of violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms" in China.
Washington also wanted the Commission to call on China to assure freedom of expression for all citizens and to free political prisoners.
In presenting the US resolution, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Harold Koh said: "It is not confrontation to ask China to obey the global rules that it has itself aknowledged."
But already at this stage, a number of delegates among the 53 members of the Commission had opted to support China.
Ahead of the vote, China's ambassador to the UN, Qiao Zonghuai called the US draft resolution "an anti-China political farce directed and played all by the United States alone."
Recalling the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during last year's NATO campaign against Yugoslavia, the Chinese said it was the Americans who had violated Chinese human rights.
"The US is notorious with its racial discrimination, police brutality, tortures in prison, campus shooting and other serious violations of human rights," Qiao said.
And he highlighted that Washington had still to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child -- the United States and Somalia being the only two not to have done so.
Meanwhile the European Union, which also opposed China's use of the blocking device at the UN panel, is still trying to thrash out its differences with Beijing to reach accord for its WTO membership.
Earlier the EU ambassador to Beijing, Endymion Wilkinson, said negotiations would begin again very soon.
The UN body expressed concern at the continuation of human rights violations in Iran, calling on Tehran to accept a visit by one of the Commission's special representatives, something it has refused since 1996.
Cuba also came in for criticism, with the panel expressing concern about continued violations of basic freedoms and the repression of political dissidents.
Iraq was blasted for "systematic, widespread and extremely grave violations", while the UN body condemned Afghanistan for what it said were massacres and widespread human rights violations.
The UN Commission also expressed concern over the continuing civil war ravaging the Democratic Republic of Congo.:
