U.S. opts out of U.N. rights body

For the second time the Bush administration has opted not to run for a place on the U.N. Human Rights Council. The council replaced the U.N. Human Rights Commission last year, principally because the commission had demonstrated a pronounced anti-Israel bias and had included human rights violators on its board . The new council has continued the practices, which is behind the U.S. decision Tuesday to again opt out. Jewish groups have argued in favor of U.S. participation, saying structural changes make it easier for member nations to block such biases. Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) blasted the administration for opting out.”During the past several months we have seen the sad and tragic results of the U.S. retreat from the new Human Rights Council,” said Lantos, who chairs the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee. “Despite the fact that the council’s membership represents a slight improvement over the dysfunctional Human Rights Commission it replaced, it has been even more thoroughly captured by rogues like Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and Pakistan, as they have aggressively seized the ground that the United States has ceded.”