Rights panel’s repute at stake

NEW YORK — Anti-American resentment and new African unity may combine to sabotage a pending condemnation of human rights abuses in Sudan, according to diplomats who say the failure to pass a strong resolution will cripple the reputation of the once-influential U.N. rights watchdog.

The U.N. Human Rights Commission is scheduled to take up the conflict in Sudan tomorrow, but diplomats here and in Geneva warn that a resolution is unlikely at this point, and even a weaker presidential statement is in doubt.

“If this commission fails to act, I keep telling my colleagues here, if we fail to address this crisis — especially on the 10th anniversary of Rwanda — that is what we will be known for,” said Richard Williamson, who heads the U.S. delegation to the Human Rights Commission.

“The credibility that [the commission] has would be seriously crippled if they failed to act on Sudan.”

Diplomats and experts in New York and Geneva say the 15 African members on the rights panel have refused as a group to condemn one of their own.

Resentment toward the United States, a co-sponsor of the Sudan resolution, meanwhile has made it more difficult to win support among some nations on the 53-member commission, observers say.

The Islamic nations are angry over Washington’s actions in Iraq and its support of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. China, Cuba and their sympathizers on the commission, meanwhile, are looking for a chance to retaliate for America’s annual backing of critical resolutions.

Further complicating the negotiations is that Sudan is a member of the rights commission and can easily block consensus within it, or any of its voting blocs.

Human rights experts say a failure to condemn the Sudanese government’s role in the conflict — which has displaced an estimated 900,000 and killed at least 2 million over two decades — would be especially egregious as the U.N. system wrestles with the legacy of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

“The international community cannot stand idle,” declared U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to the Human Rights Commission two weeks ago. In Sudan’s Darfur region, he said, “the risk of genocide remains frighteningly real.”

Jan Egeland, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, has described the killing and displacement in Darfur as “ethnic cleansing.”

A civil war that pits the Sudanese government and Arab Muslims of the north against black Christians and animists of the south has raged for 21 years. The killing of Christians has mobilized many American churches, which have put pressure on the Bush administration to act.

A U.N. peacekeeping mission is under discussion in the Security Council.