The United States returned to the 53-member UN Human Rights Commission courtesy of uncontested elections for four Western European seats, all of which were filled by acclamation.

The other three elected from the Western European Group - determined on the basis of geographical rotation - were Germany, Ireland, and Australia.

A Third World diplomat told IPS the United States was "wise enough not to risk an election which it may have lost a second time running." He said two countries - Italy and Spain - appeared to have been forced to withdraw their candidates, mostly under U.S. pressure.

Officials from the three countries were unavailable for immediate comment.

Joanna Weschler of the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) told IPS that the United States government wanted "a guaranteed seat" in the Commission to avoid a rerun of last year, when it was kicked out of the Commission in May, prompting Congress to threaten to hold back some 244 million dollars in outstanding American dues to the United Nations.

At the time, most of the negative votes against the United States were believed to have come from Western European nations wary of the unilateralist policies of President George W. Bush's administration.

Since the vote was by secret ballot, Washington accused several unnamed countries of reneging on their written assurances of support for the United States.

The new members voted to the Commission Monday also included Japan, China, Sri Lanka, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Ukraine.

Weschler said the election of the new members to the Commission "will likely deepen the crisis in which that body finds itself."

The Commission, she said, has a growing number of countries with very poor human rights records. "We are dealing with abusers' solidarity here."

"The United States has to help get the Commission back into the business of naming and shaming (abusers). Otherwise, whether the United States is a member or not, the Commission is going to sink into irrelevance," she added.

At the conclusion of a six-week session of the Commission in Geneva last week, HRW accused the UN human rights body of choosing one by one to ignore severe human rights violations in Russia/Chechnya, Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea, among others.

HRW also said that in recent years many highly abusive governments facing censure by the Commission successfully fought to gain seats as a way of fending off criticism against them.

It singled out several countries "with disturbing human rights records commanding a significant bloc of votes" in the Commission, including Algeria, Burundi, China, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Kenya, Libya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Togo and Vietnam.

HRW also accused the 15-member European Union of departing from its long-established practice of naming the worst violators in its speech to the Commission. That part of the speech was distributed as a separate written text.

The election of the United States to the UN human rights body also comes at a time when the Bush administration has been criticized for violating the civil liberties of hundreds and thousands of U.S. residents of Middle East origin, and as Washington continues to pursue its war against terrorism.

The United States also has drawn international concern, if not condemnation, over its treatment of prisoners of that war. These have included suspected terrorist fighters from Afghanistan.

Also detained in the aftermath of last September's terrorist attacks in the United States are some 1,200 persons - mostly Arab Americans and almost all without charge or trial.

Copyright 2002 IPS

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