THROUGH its customary pressure the U.S. government – with the consent of its European allies – is furiously maneuvering to close negotiations underway in New York with a view to the creation of a Human Rights Council, a UN agency that will replace the discredited Human Rights Commission (HRC) in Geneva.

Its objectives are evident: to press for a final decision that will force the approval of a new agency that will continue to be in line with its interests and to ignore the proposals and modifications that have been put forward by the majority of countries, including Cuba, with a view to democratizing and putting an end to the political manipulation that has characterized the workings of the HRC in recent years.

This race against the clock also conceals another objective: to convert its 62nd session, scheduled to begin on March 13, into a kind of transition that will take on in a couple of weeks – not in six as it should be – the formal aspects, in that way crudely evading issue that inevitably will be on the agenda of this new period related to torture in U.S. prisons like that of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, and the illegal clandestine flights of prisoners over European countries.

Washington knows that it is the focus of investigations into those flagrant violations of human rights committed against prisoners of war and against alleged suspects of acts of terrorism, according to the report by a committee of UN experts who are demanding the closure of the kidnapping and torture center established on its military base in Guantánamo.

News emerged later of a significant meeting between President George W. Bush and the UN secretary general in the White House, during which – according to a number of agency dispatches – the pretender to emperor expressed his concern and displeasure at the report and urged him to avoid the thorny issue by excluding any mention of it in the 62nd HRC.

For its part, the State Department is not dissimulating the current pressure being mounted by its officials in various capitals, particularly African ones, to obtain the silent complicity of countries on the continent represented on the HRC, based on the precarious economic situation of some of those nations, which make them vulnerable to this type of pressure and threat.

The confirmed violations cannot be passed over in the possible final session of the HRC even though the U.S. government controls that agency. The maximum priority of U.S. politics is to halt any discussion and condemnation of such a macabre and criminal conduct.

WHERE ARE WE NOW?

On February 1, as opposed to the balance that had characterized the debate on the bases and principles of the new Human Rights Council, a new version of the original text, including aspects that had been rejected by many countries, was put into circulation. They include:

• Reduction of Council members from 53 to 45.

• The election of the membership on the basis of the vote of two thirds of the parties.

• Conditions for eligibility as a member country.

• Elimination of any reference to the need to establish guarantees to avoid any political manipulation in the presenting of resolutions on countries.

WHAT IS THE UNITED STATES SEEKING WITH THESE?

In first place to close the way to a necessary larger representation of Third World nations, in particular those who are in the front line of resistance to its plan of imperial domination.

We should not forget that in 1946, when the UN was made up of only 59 members, the HRC had 18 members. In this century that has just begun, the UN is represented by 191 states, and it is thus essential to maintain a proportion that reflects that reality. The new Human Rights Council is made up of at least 58 countries with a larger quota of seats for the nations of the South. To fail to assume that reality is to prevent with premeditation those nations being duly represented and thus deprive them of the right to defend their interests.

The attempt to elect countries on the bases of two-thirds of the vote constitutes an act of discrimination, implying that the poor nations which do not have the resources to lobby in search of support do not stand a chance and are deprived of access to a significant condemnatory tribunal.

The imposition of the conditions demanded by the superpower for Council membership is an action clearly directed against certain nations, those that the United States and its allies want to see outside of the HRC.

WHAT ARE THOSE PARAMETERS FOR ENTRY?

In the first place, not to be a nation that is the object of some "agreed" measure for alleged violations of human rights or subjected to sanctions by the Security Council.

It is fitting to ask what First World country has been the object of a HRC measure for human rights violations, or subjected to a condemnatory ruling by the Security Council? The response is obvious: solely two nations of the Third World have been the victims of that discriminatory and selective practice. That is what it is about. To convert the new Human Rights Council into a club of the rich who, seated around a table, give a thumbs down to condemn the nations of the South, even if these, as in the case of Cuba and Venezuela – to give just two examples – have done more for human rights than those who are condemning them.

Universal action is imperative in order to confront the imperial pretensions to trample over the right to the sovereign equality of states, to impose a Human Rights Council that is born dragged down by political manipulation, confrontation and double standards and, above all, to prevent in the face of the apathy of some and the complicit help of others, this agency becoming an instrument of threat, division and pressure against the South.