Why Did U.S. Lose U.N. Human Rights Seat?

ByABC News
May 11, 2001, 6:45 PM

N E W   Y O R K, May 14 -- When the United States lost its seat on the United Nations' Human Rights Commission this month, it came as a surprise and a huge embarrassment.

The United States has had a seat on the panel since its inception in 1947, when former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt was chairwoman. For it to lose its seat, many of its allies had to vote against it.

That's indeed the case. Rep. Henry J. Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the House International Relations Committee, said America's European allies made "a deliberate attempt to punish the United States."

He called the ouster of the United States from the panel an "inexplicable and inexcusable decision."

On the other side of the aisle, Sen. Joseph Biden, ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, acknowledged the United States has "angered the hell out of our European allies."

U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, "Clearly, I think it's fair to speculate there may be issues related to how we handled ourselves, to how we position [ourselves]."

The Cost of a Middle Shield

Much of the ire has likely built up in recent weeks as the Bush administration tries to assert itself by moving unilaterally more often than the more collaborative Clinton administration.

In the London newspaper The Guardian, journalist Peter Preston wrote of the United States: "They see themselves as the new masters of a globalized world.

"Russia is a broken power. China needs cutting down to size. They won the Cold War because they broke the Soviet economy and thus the Soviet system without firing a shot."

The most glaring example of this has been the Bush administration's insistence on constructing a nuclear missile defense system for the United States.

The system, much like Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative or Star Wars, as it was better known violates the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which banned missile defenses.

Moscow says the treaty is the foundation of global security, but President Bush says the United States needs the system to protect against nuclear attacks by "rogue" states, and has announced plans to disregard the treaty.