U.S. Defends Status of D.C. Voters

Before U.N. Panel

By Julia Preston

Washington Post Foreign Service

UNITED NATIONS, March 31-- Senior Clinton administration officials were obliged today to defend the limited voting status of District of Columbia residents before a key U.N. human rights committee, marking the first time the issue of D.C. representation has come up before the United Nations.

The discussion of the district at the world organization does not have any immediate legal implications, U.S. officials said. But delighted D.C. statehood activists said it opened up a new avenue for lobbying.

The situation of D.C. voters came up this week during a series of hearings at which U.S. officials laid out for the first time measures the United States has taken to meet the terms of a key human rights treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The United States ratified the treaty in 1992.

Deval Patrick, assistant attorney general for civil rights, and John Stattuck, assistant secretary of state for human rights, are leading the U.S. delegation. Every country that signs the treaty is required to report from time to time on what it has done to comply. The reports are delivered to the International Human Rights Committee, which is made up of 18 authorities on human rights law.

In the first hearing, committee members peppered U.S. officials Wednesday with questions about aspects of the U.S. system of government, including the treatment of Cuban and Haitian refugees and laws that they said allow capital punishment for teenagers and pregnant women.

During Wednesday's sessions, a committee member from Ecuador, Cecilia Medina Quiroga, asked U.S. officials to clarify the situation of D.C. residents. Quiroga cited several articles of the human rights covenant that entitle all citizens to self-determination and equal suffrage.

Timothy Cooper, of the Statehood Solidarity Committee, a District-based group, said Quiroga raised the question after his group approached her to plead its case for greater D.C. representation.

Today, Patrick responded with a straight, no-frills account of the Disrict's voting status. D.C. residents vote in presidential elections. They elect one delegate to the House of Representatives, who can vote in committee but not on the floor. They have no representation in the Senate.

"We feel we are in full compliance with every aspect of the treaty," said Shattuck, the administration's top human rights official. "We're not under any obligation through the treaty to adopt a new system for the District."

But he added, "The treaty may stimulate us to look at new ways in which residents of the District should be represented."

Cooper said U.S. officials misled the committee. "To say we have equal suffrage is clearly an erroneous statement, and the State Department ought to know better," he said.But Cooper and Quiroga's short question "allows us to present the issue of our second-class status in a new light, in the fledgling arena of international human rights law.

"Several statehood groups joined together in April 1993 to file an action against the United States with the Inter-American Human Rights commission, which is a part of the Organization for American States. They are awaiting a decision on whether the commission will hear the case.

The U.S. government, when it signed the human rights covenant, tacked on a condition specifying that the pact cannot be used as the basis for legal action in U.S. courts. The United States argued that its laws already meet the treaty's standards.

But because the United States remains under the vigilance of the U.N. human rights committee, statehood groups can continue to press their case.