The U.S. government has decided against proposing a U.N. resolution critical of China's human rights policy, officials said Thursday. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said U.S. representatives advised other delegations to the 53-nation U.N. Human Rights Commission of the decision. Attempts to criticize China have frequently been a central clash of the annual commission session, but Beijing has succeeded in recent years in mustering enough support among developing countries to avoid censure. Last October, then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States and China had agreed to hold talks aimed at resuming their dialogue over human rights. China broke off the dialogue last March after Washington sought a commission resolution criticizing Beijing's human rights record. China won a vote 28-6, with nine abstentions, that derailed the U.S. proposal. The United States decided not to bring a resolution on China in 2003 because it said it saw improvements in the world's most populous country. There also was no resolution the previous year when the United States was not a member of the commission.
