Back in February there were groans of dismay among civil-liberties activists when Hillary Clinton, in one of her early pronouncements as secretary of state, suggested that America had more important things to discuss with China than human rights. "Our pressing on those [human-rights] issues can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate-change crisis and the security crisis," she said.rnBut on March 31st the Obama administration did something very concrete to correct any impression that diplomatic lobbying for liberty was too big a luxury in a world with other woes on its mind. In a bid to redeem a body which sceptics had called irredeemable, it announced its intention to seek one of the 47 seats on the United Nations Human Rights Council.
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