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Cuba Withdraws Guantanamo Resolution
JONATHAN FOWLER
Associated Press
GENEVA - Cuba avoided a showdown with the United States on Thursday by withdrawing a resolution from the top U.N. human rights body that called for an investigation into the treatment of prisoners at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The resolution alleged widespread abuses at Guantanamo, where few of the more than 600 terrorism suspects being held by U.S. authorities have been charged with crimes or given access to lawyers.
But Cuban Ambassador Jorge Mora Godoy told the 53-nation commission he would not ask for a vote on the resolution because U.S. "threats and blackmail" had ensured its failure.
The United States, Mora Godoy alleged, had warned commission members with citizens being held at Guantanamo that voting for the resolution could lead American authorities to block the release or transfer of their nationals.
Among the commission members believed to have detainees in Guantanamo are Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt and Pakistan.
"Tangible is the fear of Western countries and some in Latin America to stand up with dignity to the fascist practices of the U.S. administration lest they receive reprimands and retaliations," he said.
U.S. Ambassador Richard Williamson, the head of the American delegation, called the Cuban resolution a "stunt" and denied Cuban allegations of America strong-arming countries into opposing the resolution.
"You know when a Cuban lies. It's when they move their mouth," he told reporters after the meeting. "They tried to withdraw and do it gracefully. But a loss is a loss is a loss."
Before the start of the meeting, Williamson told reporters: "The United States has authority under the law of armed conflict to detain enemy combatants for the duration of hostilities. ... It's not a human rights issue."
Still, U.S. Ambassador Kevin Moley, America's permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva, said Washington may consider a visit by a new U.N. counterterrorism monitor - a post created by the commission Thursday.
The Cuban resolution called for an investigation by the commission's experts on torture, judicial independence and arbitrary detention. It was introduced April 15, immediately after the U.N. rights watchdog voted 22-21, with 10 abstentions, to call on the communist country to "refrain from adopting measures which could jeopardize the fundamental rights, the freedom of expression and the right to due process of its citizens."
"Those who accused Cuba and other Third World countries yesterday are today's accused," Mora Godoy said Thursday. "Their authority and prestige are already beyond salvation."
The Guantanamo resolution had been expected to ignite fierce debate at the commission, which ends its annual six-week session Friday. But Mora Godoy and German Ambassador Michael Steiner, who thanked Cuba for withdrawing the resolution, were the only delegates to address Thursday's meeting.
Germany had been expected to use a "no action" procedural move to block debate on the resolution - a tactic regularly employed by developing countries, such as Cuba, to stop the commission from condemning their human rights records.
In 2002, the United States began sending terrorism suspects to Guantanamo, a base on the eastern end of Cuba that America leases under an agreement predating Cuba's 1959 communist revolution.
Most of those imprisoned in Guantanamo have been picked up in Afghanistan and Pakistan since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
U.S. human rights groups have also protested the detentions, and the U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether federal judges should be permitted to hear complaints from the Guantanamo prisoners.
Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said his country will keep pressing the international community to investigate the treatment of terror suspects at Guantanamo, despite suspension of a U.N. resolution.
"We are going to continue pursuing this issue," Perez Roque said Thursday. "We will bring back this project at the appropriate time. The issue is alive."
What a wonderful US Ambassador, eh? That's why other countries hate us....
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