WASHINGTON: Members of a congressional human rights panel accused the Clinton administration last week of failing to match its rhetoric on human rights with its foreign policy decisions.
The State Department won praise from the House International Relations human rights subcommittee for this year’s report of worldwide human rights abuses in nations both friendly and hostile to U.S policy.
But Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif. a member of the committee, said Clinton had done no better than his Republican predecessors in making human rights a central part of foreign policy.
“Our hopes have not been fulfilled that the Clinton administration would give more than short shrift” to human rights concerns, he said. He said some policy-makers consider human rights “nothing more than a nuisance which stands in the way of conducing an intelligent foreign policy.”
The subcommittee chairman, Rep. Christopher Smith, R-NJ., accused the administration of a “halfhearted and inconsistent human rights policy”
He cited the “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia and Russia’s bombardment or civilians in Chechnya as cases in which “the administration has not given sufficient weight to these abuses in formulating its policy toward the nations in question.” John Shattuck, assistant secretary of state for human rights, insisted that human rights remains a central element of the administration’s foreign policy. “This administration takes a back state no one in its commitment to spotlighting and focus on the Department report released to Congress last week, he said.
He said the administration had directly communicated its concerns at high levels that Congress” will not do business as usual” and continue financial aid to Russia “if the outrages in Chechnya continue,”
Particularly grating to some committee members was Clinton’s decision to remove human rights improvement as a condition of favorable trading status for China last year. The handling of that matter made the United States appear as “paper tigers” to the Chinese, said Smith.
Reps. Dan Burton, R-Ind., and Peter King R-N.Y., said widespread Tights abuses by India, including torture, extrajudicial killings and rape of prisoners, have been over looked by the United States as it socks closer ties with the world’s largest democracy. King said that before the administration finalizes an extradition treaty for India, it should ensure that the treaty will not facilitate human rights violations against anyone who is expedited.
Article extracted from this publication >> February 10, 1995
