ZIMBABWE, where the Government stands accused of intimidating opponents and manipulating food aid to achieve victory at the polls last month, has won re-election to the UN Human Rights Commission, fuelling calls for the body's abolition.

Zimbabwe was among 15 countries elected by the UN’s Economic and Social Council on Wednesday to serve three-year terms on the 53-nation human rights panel in Geneva.

The election provoked an outcry from the United States, Canada and Australia. But Britain’s UN ambassador, Emyr Jones-Parry, remained silent.

“The entire human rights machinery of the UN needs reform and this is a good example of why,” Anne Patterson, the acting US ambassador, said yesterday. “Countries like Zimbabwe, and in previous years Sudan and Cuba, are human rights violators of the first order.”

Boniface Chidyausiku, Zimbabwe’s ambassador, hit back by invoking the detention of terror suspects at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. “Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones,” he said. Other countries with poor human rights records on the panel, include China, Nepal, Russia and Libya, which has chaired the commission. Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, recently criticised the “declining credibility and professionalism” of the commission.

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