April 19, 2000

WASHINGTON, April 18 -- In an embarrassing defeat for the Clinton administration, the principal United Nations body on human rights voted in Geneva today not to act on a United States resolution criticizing China's human rights record.

The vote came after the State Department released one of its most withering annual reports on human rights in China and after Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, made a rushed overnight trip to Geneva from India last month to make an impassioned speech to the group, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. It was the first appearance by a secretary of state before the body, officials have said.

The commission voted 22 to 18 to back a Chinese motion for no action on the United States-sponsored resolution; 12 nations abstained. In effect, the vote prevented discussion on the substance of the resolution.

The State Department made an extra effort this year to have China's human rights practices condemned in what has become an annual test of Washington's desire to criticize Beijing. The resolution also failed last year, but the United States committed less lobbying power then.

By announcing its intention in January to sponsor a critical resolution, much earlier than usual, the administration signaled to Congress that it was paying as much attention to rights abuses in China as to Beijing's desired entry into the World Trade Organization.

At the White House today, a spokesman for the National Security Council, P. J. Crowley, said the administration was disappointed. He noted that the vote today was closer -- a difference of four votes compared with five last year.

In Geneva, the assistant secretary for human rights, Harold H. Koh, who led the lobbying campaign among delegates, tried to put a positive face on the vote. "The basic message we sent to the Chinese was that the United States will stand up for the Chinese people," he said.

In contrast, the senior Chinese official at the vote today, Qiao Zonghuai, denounced the resolution as "an anti-China political farce directed by the United States alone."

The State Department's human rights report this year described China's "poor human rights record" as having "deteriorated markedly" throughout 1999 and specifically referred to actions against Falun Gong, the spiritual movement whose top leaders were sentenced to long terms in prison in December.

The report also cited Beijing's "extremely limited tolerance of public dissent aimed at the government, fear of unrest and the limited scope or inadequate implementation of laws protecting basic freedoms."

The resolution itself rebuked China for "severe measures taken to restrict the peaceful activities" of Buddhists, Muslims, Christians and the Falun Gong.

The Beijing government takes the 53-member United Nations human rights body seriously and has worked hard in the last several years to thwart Washington's efforts to criticize its record in such a public forum.

In assessing the defeat for the administration, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, Ken Roth, applauded the State Department's efforts but said they were not adequately backed by the White House. "This never became a White House issue," Mr. Roth said.

In response, an administration official said the national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, had brought the issue up with counterparts in other countries.

In reviewing the vote, Mr. Roth said it was clear that among countries that abstained there were at least seven that could have been persuaded, with a White House campaign, to vote in favor of the United States. Among those he cited were South Korea, Rwanda, Argentina, Ecuador and Chile.

Four votes needed to be changed from abstentions into votes against the Chinese motion for a substantive discussion of the United State resolution to move ahead.

A tie would have allowed discussions at the commission to proceed.

In preparing for the vote, the State Department was publicly upbeat. Mr. Koh told reporters last month that Washington had the "best chance since 1995" to defeat the Chinese motion to block discussion.

Mr. Koh commended Dr. Albright at the time, saying that she was "more committed to the issues of democracy, human rights and labor than anyone I've known." He added, "She is the leader of our team, and she is in charge of putting forward and advancing our entire commission agenda."

But behind the scenes, the State Department had a fairly difficult task. Its prime goal was to persuade the European Union to sponsor the resolution with Washington, to put up a more united front against the Chinese and to encourage smaller countries to stand up to the concerted efforts of Beijing to block the resolution.

According to a State Department official's account of Washington's efforts to build unity within the European Union, France and Belgium remained holdouts.

"The European Union adopted a sub-optimal approach -- that they would vote with us on the no-action but wouldn't co-sponsor," the official said.

Today the European Union was against the Chinese motion to block discussion.

But the official acknowledged that leaders of those European Union countries in favor of co-sponsoring the resolution, including Britain, did not go out of their way to lobby other countries for sponsorship.

"The European Union's commitments on these human rights issues are concerned with how their relationship plays with Beijing," the official said.

In its efforts to get co-sponsorship, the United States encountered a recently developed tactic of the Beijing government in which China offers countries "dialogue not confrontation." Under this rubric, China holds closed-door meetings with governments who say they are concerned about Beijing's rights record.

Australia and Canada are among those that conduct such a dialogue with China. Neither co-sponsored the United States resolution.

The United States also held a human rights dialogue with the Chinese in 1999 but the Chinese canceled the dialogue for 2000 -- a visit by Chinese officials to meet with administration officials -- after the bombing of their Belgrade embassy in the Kosovo war.

In 1998, the year of the summit meeting between the Chinese leader, Jiang Zemin, and President Clinton, Washington did not submit a resolution to the human rights commission, saying there were improvements in the record.

In 1995, the United States succeeded for the only time in defeating the Chinese government's procedural vote to block discussion.

Those countries voting with China were Bangladesh, Bhutan, Botswana, Burundi, Congo, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Madagascar, Morocco, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Qatar, Russia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Venezuela and Zambia.

Those voting with the United States were Britain, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, El Salvador, France, Guatemala, Germany, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Poland, Spain and Swaziland.

The countries that abstained were Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Liberia, Mauritius, Mexico, Philippines, South Korea, Rwanda, Senegal and Tunisia.

The Romanian delegate walked out.