CNSNews.com

Editorials: Powell Needs to Find Out Who Double-Crossed U.S.
By Susan Jones
CNSNews.com Morning Editor
May 07, 2001
(CNSNews.com) - Various newspaper editorials say the State Department was caught napping when the United States was voted off the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

Secretary of State Colin Powell is singled out for being blindsided by 14 nations - still unknown - that promised to vote for the United States, then reneged on the promise.

Powell has said he does not plan to find out which nations said one thing, then did another. "I'm not going to spend any of my time trying to break into what was essentially a secret vote to try to find out what happened," Powell is quoted as saying.

"Why not?" asks an editorial in Monday's Wall Street Journal. "That's a question likely to be raised in Congress, where the U.N. image is already shabby."

Writing in Monday's New York Times, columnist William Safire takes a similar tack: "The sneak diplomatic attack caught Colin Powell and our State Department asleep...Who were the 14 nations that supposedly assured us of their support and then double-crossed us to elevate a slave trader (Sudan) into the seat we were forced to vacate?

"Secretary Powell professed to be too proud or too busy to ask...That's even worse than being caught napping," said Safire. "Powell's job is to know which nations will stab us in the back in return for some Chinese trade or Arab oil preference or Security Council vote.

Safire challenges journalists to figure out which nations made deals behind the back of the United States.

He also notes that the U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to vote this week on a State Department authorization bill that contains the United States' back dues to the U.N. plus an additional $67 million to rejoin UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) after 17 years.

Safire says Congress should suspend payment until it learns the identities of the "faithless fourteen nations - and for what commercial or political advantage they swapped their votes by selling out the fundamental rights of human beings."

-- Anonymous, May 07, 2001

Answers

What fourteen? I'd say they all voted against the US. And will undoubtedly continue to do so.

-- Anonymous, May 07, 2001