U.S. and EU bolster dubious democracies: rights group

By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United States and European Union are undermining human rights worldwide by letting states with dubious elections like Pakistan and Kenya pose as real democracies, Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.

"States claiming the mantle of democracy, including Kenya and Pakistan, should guarantee the human rights that are central to it, including the rights to free expression, assembly and association, as well as free and fair elections," the New York-based rights watchdog said in its annual report.

The group said Russia, Nigeria, Bahrain, Jordan and Thailand also had acted as if merely holding an election was enough to make them worthy of being called democratic.

"It seems Washington and European governments will accept even the most dubious election so long as the 'victor' is a strategic or commercial ally," said Kenneth Roth, head of Human Rights Watch.

In Pakistan, a key ally in the U.S. war against terrorism and the fight against the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan, the organization said President Pervez Musharraf had undermined the possibility of having free elections next month by revising the constitution and sacking the independent judiciary.

"But the United States and Britain, Islamabad's largest aid donors, have refused to condition assistance to the government on improving pre-electoral conditions," the report said.

Peggy Hicks, global advocacy director for the group, told reporters the world's "autocrats have taken note of that (U.S. and EU tolerance) and have gotten bolder."

The U.S. mission to the United Nations had no immediate comment on the Human Rights Watch report.