Charles Clarke reacted angrily today after a senior United Nations official warned that his plans to deport foreign extremists breached international human rights obligations.

A UN official objected to the Home Secretary's announcement that "preachers of hate" are soon to be deported from the UK.

But the UN’s special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, accused the Government of trying to circumvent its duty not to deport people to countries where they could face torture or abuse.

The Home Secretary has different priorities to those of the UN.

Today the Home Secretary retorted furiously that the UN was too pre-occupied with the human rights of terrorists when it should be more concerned about their victims.

"The human rights of those people who were blown up on the Tube in London on July 7 are, to be quite frank, more important than the human rights of the people who committed those acts," he told the ITV News Channel.

Source: http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/nl/content.asp?c=fwLYKnN8LzH&b=312458&content_id={3D56D897-E969-4B28-9FCE-7213BC39A675}&notoc=1
Two years ago, UN Human Rights Commissioner, Sergio Vieira de Mello, was murdered by suicide bombers in Baghdad.

Vieira de Mello's last public appearance before leaving for Iraq was as keynote speaker to a Wiesenthal Center-UNESCO joint international conference on Educating for Tolerance - The Case of Resurgent Antisemitism, held at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. At the conference, de Mello spoke of the Holocaust and the singling out of the State of Israel in the international arena. He also instructed his Secretariat to designate Dr Shimon Samuels, the Wiesenthal Center's Director for International Liaison, as "Expert Witness on Antisemitism" for the group responsible for carrying out the program of action developed at the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa in 2001.

At a December 2003 meeting of this group, Dr. Samuels recalled the antisemitic paroxysm of the Durban conference, and called on the UN "to fix an annual Day of Holocaust Commemoration and for the Elimination of Antisemitism, for each 27 January." Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp, was liberated by the Allies on January 27, 1945. The UN Human Rights Commission's final document on the Durban process officially included this proposal of the Wiesenthal Center which was then presented to the UN General Assembly.

Australia, Canada, Israel, Russia and the United States have now requested that the proposal be debated at the 60th General Assembly session which opens on September 13th.

The United Nations bankrolled the production of thousands of banners, bumper stickers, mugs, and T-shirts bearing the slogan "Today Gaza and Tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem," which have been widely distributed to Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip, according to a U.N. official.

The U.N. support of the Palestinian Authority's propaganda operation in the midst of the Israeli evacuation of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip has provoked outrage from Israeli and Jewish leaders, who are blaming Turtle Bay for propagating an inflammatory message that they say encourages Palestinian Arab violence.

The U.N. denies knowing what exactly their money is spent on.

A UNDP spokesman, William Orme, said his office gave money to the Palestinian Withdrawal Committee to "help the Palestinian Authority communicate to the populace about the withdrawal and its economic and social impact."

The money was funneled to the committee through a subagency called Program of Assistance to the Palestinian People. U.N. officials were not told about the propaganda campaign or about the slogan, he said.

Did I say 'their money'? As the director of international affairs for the American Jewish Congress, David Twersky, pointed out, it's not just 'theirs' - it's other people's tax money.

"How come they don't know what's happening to their money?" he said. "Where's the audit? Where's the transparency? How could responsible U.N. officials living off of tax dollars have the chutzpah to say I don't know what they're spending their money on?"

Oxfam has urged the US, Russia, India and Brazil to support a UN reform that would require the organisation to act quickly to prevent genocide.

The international charity accuses the four countries of blocking UN plans designed to stop atrocities such as the 1994 Rwanda genocide happening again.

This is one of the reforms due to be discussed at a UN summit next month and the proposal would oblige the international community to take action to prevent genocide if governments failed to do so.

According to Oxfam, other countries opposing the move include Syria, Iran, Cuba, Pakistan, Egypt and Algeria.

Oxfam also claims that the US, while publicly supporting the reform, is seeking a watered down version, which would render it ineffective, but governments supporting the call for strong language in the draft statement include Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Nigeria, Kenya, Chile, Peru, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Canada and the EU.

Well, Bolton is headed to the UN as a recess appointment--he can serve until January 2007. I do wish we Americans had someone more diplomatic for a diplomatic post, but Bolton did help the UN erase the "Zionism is racism" resolution, so perhaps he can help the institution live up to its best ideals, instead of sink to the lowest common denominator. We can hope. The below is an excerpt from the Washington Post. --Wendy

Bolton acknowledged yesterday that he has written critically of the United Nations, saying one highlight of his career was his role in the successful 1991 repeal of the General Assembly 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism, "thus removing the greatest stain on the U.N.'s reputation."

He said he has consistently stressed in his writings that "American leadership is critical to the success of the U.N., an effective U.N., one that is true to the original intent of its charter's framers."

Bolton, 56, served in the administration of George H.W. Bush, father of the current president, as assistant secretary of state for international organizations, and in the Reagan administration as an assistant attorney general. He keeps a mock grenade in his office, labeled "To John Bolton -- World's Greatest Reaganite."

Throughout the current administration's first term, Bolton was often at odds with the United Nations and related institutions.

He spearheaded U.S. opposition to the International Criminal Court, declaring that the day he signed the letter withdrawing the U.S. signature on the treaty was "the happiest moment of my government service." He was the force behind Bush's Proliferation Security Initiative, a coalition designed to halt trade in nuclear materials that bypassed the United Nations. And he pressed the administration's unsuccessful campaign to deny a third term to Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

On the eve of six-nation talks over North Korea's nuclear ambitions two years ago, Bolton traveled to Seoul and denounced North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in highly personal terms. He labeled Kim a "tyrannical dictator" who had made North Korea "a hellish nightmare" -- which prompted the North Korean government to call him "human scum and bloodsucker."

Bolton also frequently riled European allies with his uncompromising stands -- and his disdain for their fledging efforts to secure an agreement with Iran to end its nuclear programs.