Alarm at South Africa's UN votes

South Africa: Nelson Mandela's South Africa projected an image of a virtuous nation reconciling with a brutal white minority…

South Africa:Nelson Mandela's South Africa projected an image of a virtuous nation reconciling with a brutal white minority government and serving as an enduring symbol of resistance to political oppression.

But South Africa's brief debut this year on the UN Security Council has tattered its reputation. It has prompted human rights activists to condemn President Thabo Mbeki for abandoning the human rights principles that defined the anti-apartheid movement and for routinely siding with some of the world's worst human rights abusers.

In just over three months, South Africa has used its position on the council to try to block discussion of human rights abuses in Myanmar and Zimbabwe. It initially backed Iran's efforts to evade sanctions for defying UN demands to subject its nuclear programme to greater scrutiny.

And it reacted coolly to Kosovo's bid for independence, lending its backing to a Russian effort to deny Kosovo's president the right to address the UN Security Council in its formal chambers.

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"It's a sad perversion of the anti-apartheid struggle," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch. "Mandela understood that the anti-apartheid struggle was a human rights movement and clearly stood with the human rights victims of the world."

South Africa's UN ambassador, Dumisani Kumalo, said his government remained faithful to the values of the anti-apartheid movement. He said South Africa had now embraced a pragmatic foreign policy that urged such countries as Myanmar, Sudan and Zimbabwe to resolve their disputes through negotiations.

"We're not into 'who is to blame'," Kumalo said. "We believe in resolving problems . . . We resolved our differences between black and white people in South Africa."

Kumalo said his government was seeking to counter "an imbalance of global power" in the security council, where he said the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China use their authority to attack enemies and to shield friends. The council should stick to resolving international conflicts and not abuse its role by bullying small countries or expanding its authority into areas beyond its jurisdiction, including human rights, he said.

South Africa's approach has bolstered its standing among the Third World bloc - including the influential Group of 77 and the Non-Aligned Movement - that has long bridled at the power of the council's five heavyweights. It has strengthened its case within Africa for a permanent security council seat if the council is ever expanded.

But it has also set Pretoria on a collision course with the US and its closest European allies, undercutting their efforts to use the UN to constrain Iran's nuclear programme and highlight human rights abuses.

South Africa posed a rare challenge to the council's five powers by pressing them to abandon an agreement to impose a ban on Iranian arms sales and an asset freeze on Iran's top military commanders. The South African initiative failed, and Pretoria ultimately voted in favour of the sanctions.

South Africa's more assertive approach has alienated some of its traditional allies in the human rights community and earned praise from countries accused of committing large-scale atrocities. South Africa "is a great nation; it's a role model for us", said Sudan's UN ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem Mohamad.

- (LA Times-Washington Post)