25/04/2001

U.N. Body: Stop Executions

GENEVA (AP) - The top U.N. human rights body called Wednesday for a worldwide moratorium on executions as a step toward ending capital punishment.

But the United States was joined by Japan, China, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and other countries in opposing an anti-death penalty resolution put forward by the European Union (news - web sites) to the U.N. Human Rights Commission. The vote was 27-18 in favor of the EU proposal. Seven countries abstained, and one - Liberia - was absent.

U.S. Ambassador George Moose told the commission that there was public debate on the death penalty in the United States, but all agreed that ``due process must be rigorously applied'' if it is used.

``Each nation should decide for itself through democratic processes whether its domestic law should permit capital punishment,'' he said.

The EU motion urged countries that allow the death penalty ``to establish a moratorium with a view to completely abolishing the death penalty.''

The resolution also urged countries to refuse extradition ``in the absence of effective assurances ... that capital punishment will not be carried out.''

Swedish Ambassador Johan Molander, who spoke for the EU, said abolition of the death penalty was fundamental to EU human rights policy.

In previous years the 53-nation commission has endorsed four similar death penalty resolutions.

Human rights campaigners welcomed the resolution even though it is nonbinding.

``It weakens the argument that the death penalty is an internal affair,'' Mario Marazziti, spokesman for Italy's Community of Sant'Egidio, told The Associated Press.

In December, the group handed the United Nations a 3 million- signature petition supporting a moratorium.

``It's really a human rights issue,'' he said. And more countries are joining the abolitionist camp, he said: ``Only two weeks ago both Chile and Ukraine passed abolition laws.''

By keeping the death penalty the United States is isolating itself from democratic, abolitionist countries, said Amnesty International spokeswoman Anna Wegelin.

Amnesty says 108 countries have either abolished the death penalty or do not apply their death penalty laws. Eighty-seven still use it.

On Tuesday, an Amnesty report said the high-profile execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (news - web sites) risks turning him into a martyr for those who share his radical beliefs.

McVeigh is scheduled to die May 16 by lethal injection for the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, in which 168 people, including 19 children, were killed and more than 500 injured.

Jonathan Fowler