UNITED NATIONS — President Bush announced Tuesday that he planned to tighten sanctions against the military government in Myanmar and slap a visa ban on “those responsible for egregious human-rights violations.”
In a speech at the United Nations, Bush focused on human rights, outlining new U.S. efforts to force the military rulers to accede to the demands of the democracy movement in the Southeast Asian nation once known as Burma.
Calling on the United Nations to honor its human-rights charter, Bush turned a spotlight on efforts to overcome dictatorships, including those in Cuba, Zimbabwe and Sudan.
“Every civilized nation also has a responsibility to stand up for the people suffering under a dictatorship,” Bush said in his address. “In Belarus, North Korea, Syria and Iran, brutal regimes deny their people the fundamental rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration” of Human Rights.
He urged the organization to help control the spread of deadly diseases such as malaria; invest in education, particularly for women and girls; and to include poor countries in the global economy “with partnership, not paternalism.”
He urged the world body to reform its Human Rights Council, which in the past has had its chairmanship held by Libya and other dictatorships, and said that the United States was open to an overhaul of the U.N. Security Council.
The council is made up of the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France. Bush said he thought Japan was “well qualified” for membership.
The General Assembly speech Tuesday veered away from the themes of terrorism and war that were the foundation of Bush’s first speeches at the United Nations. Instead, he turned to elements of foreign policy that carry less of an edge while still encouraging the spread of democracy and the fight against tyranny.
Bush did not mention the nuclear dispute with Iran in his speech, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other advisers used their time here to build support for a new Security Council resolution that would impose more meaningful punishment on Tehran for ignoring a U.N. mandate to suspend its enrichment program.
On Myanmar, the United States and Western allies imposed a first set of sanctions on the country in 2003, banning imports and freezing assets of government officials.
On Monday and Tuesday, protests in Myanmar spread to several cities, with tens of thousands of demonstrators joining Buddhist monks on the streets of the country’s biggest city, Yangon, also known as Rangoon.
On Tuesday, Myanmar’s military leaders imposed a nighttime curfew and banned gatherings of more than five people.
In separate meetings later, Bush pressed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Tuesday to move on stalled measures deemed critical to political reconciliation, while al-Maliki made clear his unhappiness about the recent killing of Iraqi civilians by private U.S. security contractors.
Bush met privately at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel with Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, and Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, seeking to bring about a broad peace agreement between the Palestinians and Israel.
Also, Bush urged swift U.N. action to end the violence in Sudan’s Darfur region during a Security Council debate marked by disagreements between members over how intrusive international peacekeeping operations on the continent should be.
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