State Department critiques human rights

Unexpected progress in Egypt
The Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s announcement on Saturday of forthcoming multi-candidate presidential elections was welcomed at the State Department as a "positive sign."

However, as the details of Mubarak's plan remain unclear, Kozak cautioned that it may be too  soon to say whether it is the "breakthrough" for which Washington has been pushing.

A senior State Department official told NBC News that the U.S. knew Egypt was considering this democratic move, but that they did not know Mubarak would make an announcement this past weekend.

In addition, while discussing Egypt's announcement, Kozak called on Egypt to allow Ayman Nour and other opposition figures to take part in any elections. "Letting opponents participate, not putting them in jail, would be a first good step," he said.

Usual suspects
The report detailed problems among many of the usual suspects when human rights abuses are discussed — North Korea, China and Cuba — as well as recent problems in Sudan and the apparent backsliding of democracy and freedom in Russia.

The report was critical of North Korea's repressive regime, noting that, "An estimated 150,000-200,000 persons are believed to be political prisoners in detention camps in remote areas, and defectors report that many prisoners have died from torture, starvation, disease, exposure, or a combination of causes." 

China’s progress on human rights during 2004 was also called out as “disappointing.”

In addition, the report slammed Belarus, Cuba, Zimbabwe, and Iran, but lauded political progress in Afghanistan, Ukraine and Iraq.

Iran is still considered, "out of phase with what's going on in the rest of the world," according to Kozak. "Iran's got a real problem. If it wants to become a respected member of the family of nations, it's not doing the things that get you there."

U.S. problems acknowledged
While the report does not cover questionable American practices because of the argument that a U.S. report on the United States would suffer for a lack of credibility, events at Abu Ghraib were acknowledged as “a stain on the honor of the US,” by Kozak.

However, the State Department noted that the real question is not whether human rights abuses have taken place somewhere, but what the country is doing to prevent them from happening in the future and to hold people accountable.

"The president's been very clear on the issue of torture, which is we are against it, and by torture, by anyone's common-sense definition of it, not some fancy definition," Kozak told reporters in response to questions about the criticized practice of rendering suspects to countries that permit torture.

Kozak added that under treaty obligations,  the United States considers whether someone is likely to be tortured before sending him or her to a certain country, adding that is one of the key issues in the decisions on whether to send some Guantanamo Bay detainees back home.

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