WASHINGTON, Mar 21, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) The United States is determined to win condemnation of China during the 56th annual session of the UN Commission on Human Rights that just opened in Geneva, a senior US official said Monday.

Washington considers that there was "a marked deterioration across the board on China's human rights record in 1999," Harold Koh, Assistant Secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor, told reporters.

Koh said that, unlike in previous years, a US-drafted resolution condemning China had good chances of passing over Beijing's objections.

"There will be in our expectation and hope a vote on the merits of China's human rights conduct in late April," he said.

"It will send for the first time in recent memory a strong message to China from the members of the UN Human Rights Commission that they've seen steady deterioration of China's human rights situation," said Koh.

The official said US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright would head to Geneva Thursday as a sign of her strong personal interest in the matter.

After successfully using counter-motions over the last few years to defeat such measures, "the Chinese are extremely concerned about the real prospects that the no-action motion will fail this year," he said.

Koh did not predict what effect, if any, passage of the resolution would have on relations between China and Taiwan in the wake of Taiwan's election of Chen Shui-bian as president.

"It's always hard to say what the effect is going to be," he said.

But Koh stressed that a key US aim at the United Nations "is promoting human rights by promoting democratic values, that means both that we are deeply concerned about the treatment of democratic dissenters in the People's Republic of China and supportive of legitimate democratic efforts elsewhere, particularly, in Taiwan."

((c) 2000 Agence France Presse)

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