–ON DEFEAT OF UN RIGHTS RESOLUTION

A specialist at the independent group Human Rights Watch has confirmed what one might already have guessed from reading the published reports of last month’s meeting of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which defeated a resolution criticizing Russia’s policies in Chechnya. Rachel Denber of the advocacy group’s New York office told Jamestown in a May 6 telephone interview that “neither the European Union”–which sponsored the resolution–“nor the United States worked very hard for it to be passed.” It was especially striking to see the delegations of pro-U.S. countries such as Guatemala abstaining.

–THE WAR’S HEAVY TOLL