U.S. Withdraws Press Freedom Declaration At OAS 


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Thursday May 27 12:05 AM ET 

U.S. Withdraws Press Freedom Declaration At OAS

By Anthony Boadle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States shelved a planned hemispheric
declaration on press freedoms that angered newspaper publishers across the
Americas who said it would fuel censorship in Latin America, officials said
Wednesday.

The document, meant to be adopted by the Organization of American States'
annual meeting in Guatemala in two weeks, has instead caused a diplomatic
flap.

As originally planned, the U.S. draft document was supposed to include a
strong statement in favor of press freedom. But the draft met resistance
from Mexico and Peru, who saw it as meddling in their affairs and insisted
it be watered down, sources involved in the OAS talks said.

But then the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA), representing the
hemisphere's newspaper publishers, rejected the final draft as a threat to
press freedoms rather than a defense.

``We had prepared a very strong draft, but a number of states were not
comfortable with it and, essentially, they watered it down,'' a State
Department official said.

The New York Times said the declaration would undermine the press in Latin
America and called for its withdrawal. In an editorial Tuesday, the paper
said it was ``dismaying'' to see Washington sponsor a document that would
endorse limits on media freedoms.

The U.S. mission at the OAS asked Wednesday that the draft be sent back to
the negotiating committee for reworking until next year, effectively burying
the ill-fated initiative.

``In practical terms, the issue died today,'' an OAS official told Reuters.
``It will not be discussed at all at the annual meeting and I don't think
the committee will do anything more about it,'' the Latin American official
added.

The IAPA rejected wording in the draft that said the press had a duty to
provide ``accurate information,'' an ambiguous term that could encourage
censorship.

Human rights lawyers were troubled by a clause that would allow governments
to limit press freedoms with local laws. They said 17 Latin American nations
have laws that make it a crime to show contempt for public officials.

U.S. officials, under fire for the diplomatic snafu, said they had tried to
strengthen and protect freedom of expression in the hemisphere, but ran up
against resistance inside the 34-nation organization where business is
decided by consensus.

U.S. negotiators were criticized for making the mistake of not consulting
the Miami-based IAPA, the region's main press body.

``It is off the table because there is no point in presenting something that
is designed to protect journalists doing their work if the major press
organization does not like it,'' the U.S. official acknowledged. ``We have
to get them on board.''

U.S. negotiators plan to keep the project alive and present it at next
year's meeting in Canada.

But they are not hopeful they can find a common denominator between Latin
American states unwilling to relax their hold on the press and media
organizations.

``If we can't get consensus, we may just say 'forget it' and leave things as
they are,'' said the State Department official.
 
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