Rights meeting wrangling

Press, 9 May 1985, Page 6

Rights meeting wrangling

NZPA-Reuter Ottawa An international conference on human rights has opened in Ottawa, East and West at odds over how widely the sensitive issue should be publicly discussed. Despite an all-night bargaining session, experts from 35 nations failed to agree on an agenda before the Canadian External Affairs Minister, Mr Joe Clark, opened the conference yesterday. Acknowledging what a thorny topic human rights can be, Mr Clark said, “It is, I know, a widely shared perception that the Ottawa meeting could be a difficult one.”

Alluding to the wrangling that delayed the opening by seven hours, he added, “I understand you have had some foretaste of that in the short night you spent.” North Atlantic Treaty Organisation allies are anxious to air their concerns publicly at the six-week conference, but East bloc States say that this could cause tension.

The Chief Soviet delegate, Vsevolod Sofinsky, theformer Soviet Ambassador to New Zealand, who was expelled in 1980, has said “discussion of human rights in other countries will not

contribute to the success of the conference and would only lead to confrontation.” The United States delegation has said that it intended to raise such issues as Soviet psychiatry, treatment of dissidents, religious freedom, and Jewish emigration. Mr Clark agreed that the subject was sensitive but told the delegates, “Issues of central importance such as human rights cannot and must not be avoided just because they are sensitive and can sometimes give rise to disagreement among Governments.”

The 35 countries attending the meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe all signed the 1975 Helsinki Final Acts, a code of conduct for Europe that was viewed as a landmark for detente.

Their last meeting broke up in acrimony at Madrid in 1983 after the Soviet Union shot down a South Korean airliner. Mr Clark hailed the conference as historically important, however, saying, “It is the first C.S.C.E. meeting held on the North American continent and also the first dedicated exclusively to human rights.”