"The United States is isolated in this anti-China farce," Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi told reporters. "It's natural for the anti-China resolution to end in failure."

Beijing won enough support for a "no action motion" in the 53-member U.N. body in Geneva on Friday to quash all debate on the U.S. resolution critical of China. The vote on the motion was 22 to 17, with 14 abstentions.

Sun noted that not even the European Union and other traditional U.S. allies had co-sponsored the U.S. motion. Poland co-sponsored it at the last minute.

"The result again demonstrated that to interfere in other countries' internal affairs and pursue hegemonism and power politics under the pretext of human rights could not win popular support," Sun said.

"Confrontation is not the way out," he said. "The move was against the current trend in the international human rights arena to advocate dialogue and oppose confrontation."

China has escaped Western attempts to censure it at the U.N. body every year since 1990, the first session that followed the student killings at Beijing's Tiananmen Square in June 1989.

Sun defended China's human rights record, saying Beijing has always attached importance to human rights and made unswerving efforts to promote and improve the human rights situation.

But the United States ignored improvements in China's human rights record and again tabled an anti-Beijing resolution to defame China's international image due to "domestic political needs and partisan struggle", Sun said.

The United States, in a statement issued in Geneva by Assistant Secretary of State Harold Hongju Koh, said it was "deeply disappointed" with the vote.

It accused Chinese authorities of having begun a "crackdown against organized political opposition" since late 1998.

China jailed three dissidents for up to 13 years late last year for trying to set up the opposition China Democracy Party in defiance of a ban on new political parties.

The United States urged China to "quickly bring its human rights practices into compliance" with international law. The U.S. motion expressed concern about alleged abuses, citing unfair trials, harsh sentences and "increased restrictions" in Tibet.

China's envoy Qiao Zonghuai called on member states to back its no-action motion and dismissed the alleged abuses contained in the U.S. resolution as "totally groundless".

"The United States keeps nagging China over trials of a few criminals in China's judiciary," Qiao said, adding that there were "gross violations of human rights" in the United States.

The New York-based Human Rights in China denounced the commission's decision to shelve the resolution as "unjustifiable and irresponsible".

"China is experiencing a period of severe repression. Yet the commission is silent," Xiao Qiang, executive director of the human rights group, said in a statement.

"The world's highest human rights body has failed to uphold its mandate," he said.

It was a "moral imperative and a practical necessity" to hold China accountable for its human rights abuses, Xiao added.

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Last updated: 27-April-99