Before any statements were made, the representative of Cuba asked if any State had asked for a vote on the text.

Assembly President ELIASSON clarified that it was the United States that had requested the vote.

RODRIGO MALMIERCA DÍAZ ( Cuba) said the decision to establish the new Council had been driven by the need to end the “huge discredit”, which had befallen the existing Commission on Human Rights, due to the “political manipulation, hypocrisy and double standards imposed on its work, by the United States and the European Union”. The draft being submitted today was by no means a sufficient response to addressing that challenge. Indeed, nothing in the creation of the new Council would prevent a repeat of the tradition of manoeuvring by the powers of the North, to unjustly condemn third world countries.

Cuba had been hoping for the establishment of a body that contributed to strengthening the international system of promoting and protecting human rights, through genuine cooperation, but the United States and its allies had insisted on making the “punitive and sanctioning” approach prevail, this time evinced by a provision in the text, which allowed for the suspension of the rights of those who questioned, interfered, or just disagreed, with the “hegemonic domination plans of the Empire”. Indeed, during the months of negotiation, Cuba had witnessed -- with indignation -- how the United States and its allies had exerted “strong pressure and resorted to their traditional blackmail, to break the resistance to this new plot”.

He went on to say that the text that would be adopted did not represent as balanced a view as some believed. In fact, it was a reflection of the dangerous, unipolar world that the Bush administration was trying to legitimise -- a world submitted to the force of power, in which reason and justice would have no value. “We were never deceived by the loudmouth objections of the Washington representatives. The fact that, today, the United States had requested a vote on the text, does not mean that it was not conceived and negotiated behind the scenes to accommodate its main demands, sacrificing vital interests of the countries of the South.”

“The attacks of the current US administration to the text… prove its arrogance. They lose nothing… [and], on the contrary, have assured a new means to exert confrontation, hatred and punishment, and if they protest today, it is because they intend to get new concessions,” he said. Cuba would reaffirm its serious reservations about the contents of the draft, namely that it reduced the number of members in the new Council to the detriment of its universality; and it endorsed the suspension of members that might be activated with the support of “two-thirds voting and present, without establishing a minimum limit of required votes”.

A country, elected with the support of 96 States, may be suspended of its rights by the will of a lesser number of countries. Cuba was also concerned that that nothing in the text limits, in the new Council, the pernicious and handy practice of imposing politically motivated resolutions on the countries of the South. He added that principles such as the right to development, a main demand of many developing countries, had been ignored. And, the fight against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, had been “negligently obviated”. A Council with those characteristics would not only allow the United States and its allies to have a strengthened “inquisition tribunal” against the peoples of the South, it would also assure them the impunity they already enjoyed on the existing Commission.

Finally, he warned that, those who mistakenly thought that a policy of appeasement and systematic concessions would “allow us to gain time and sate the appetite the neoconservatives that have seized control of the White House, should study the experiences of the past, and value the lessons learned… about the aggressive actions of a power with hegemonic intentions. Cuba does its duty of denouncing these facts.”

FERMIN TORO JIMENEZ (Venezuela), also speaking before the vote, said that, while he would not vote against the resolution, he would not vote in favour of it, he intended to abstain in the vote, as he had grave objections to endorsing various preambular and operative paragraphs of the text. Certain preambular and operative paragraphs were objectionable. He had striven to maintain that position throughout the negotiations. He wished to lodge reservations explicitly to preambular paragraph 1, and the inclusion of the phrase “humanitarian character”, which made it possible to find a pretext to interfere in the affairs of countries. He was also opposed to preambular paragraph 11 and its reference to the activities of non-governmental organizations. He expressed reservation on that issue as a whole.

He said he also had reservations concerning operative paragraphs 1, 2, 3, 4 and subparagraphs e and f of operative paragraph 5. Regarding operative paragraph 6, he said there was an implicit prerequisite that the Council would improve the system of special procedures. He had the same reservation on operative paragraph 7 and 8, where there was still use of criteria to limit States’ participation on an equal footing. He also had reservations to operative paragraphs 9, 10 and 14. The reservations he had expressed meant that those paragraphs were not binding for his country, nor did they have political or legal effect, as far as he was concerned.

Source: United Nations