Friday, March 24, 2000; Page A22

A CRITICAL diplomatic battle over human rights in China is underway in Geneva. There, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights is about to decide whether to take up a U.S.-sponsored resolution expressing "concern" over the recent crackdown in China against political dissidents and members of disfavored religions, such as Tibetan Buddhists or adherents of Falun Gong. To be sure, such a resolution would be mainly symbolic--but not every symbolic gesture is an empty gesture. As Secretary of State Madeleine Albright put it in an address to the commission yesterday: "We owe it to the Chinese people and to the credibility of this commission and its members not to shy away from the whole truth."

Unfortunately, the commission repeatedly has shied away from the truth about China's human rights record in recent years, adopting procedural motions that forbid the mere discussion of the topic. This year, too, the Chinese government is lobbying commission members hard, promising to engage them individually in pleasant-sounding but ineffectual human rights "dialogue" if they will withhold support for the U.S. resolution. The Chinese lobbying effort is largely aimed at European Union countries such as Germany, France, Italy and Britain, whose sponsorship of a measure would almost guarantee that it would at least be voted on--but who are, for the moment, still waffling.

Despite its mixed record on behalf of human rights in China, the Clinton administration deserves credit for having taken the initiative in sponsoring this resolution, and for having dispatched Secretary Albright to make the case for it in person. Still, it will probably take even more American leadership to sway the EU members. President Clinton, who has mentioned the resolution in recent speeches, must become actively engaged. Direct presidential contact with European leaders would signal powerfully that the United States is committed to the resolution, and not just going through the motions to mollify its own domestic critics. The president will stop in Geneva on his way home from South Asia on Sunday; there's no better place to issue a strong statement of support for the United States' own human rights resolution--to be followed by phone calls to his counterparts in Berlin, London, Paris and Rome.

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