THE Government’s annual report on human rights shows how much its commitment to that goal clashes with the War on Terror.

It would be too strong to call it a whitewash. There are many passages of criticism of other countries, including allies. Indeed, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has used particularly harsh language about Uzbekistan.

That follows the accusation from Craig Murray, its former Ambassador (now suspended), that Britain overlooked torture and other abuses because of the country’s usefulness as an ally. His breach of the conventions of his role has achieved this much, it seems.

Among dozens of other examples that the UK’s “friends” will not like, the report chides France over the ban on girls wearing headscarves in schools, saying that its insistence on assimilation of Muslims is too severe, and India for ending a seven-year moratorium on the death penalty.

But the report is a muddle. It lurches from attack to indulgence with astounding omissions. The country that benefits most from those inconsistencies is the US. That the report was published on the day US forces reached the heart of Fallujah drives the point home.

These annual reports by the Foreign Office, now in their seventh year, are an oddity. They represent a pronouncement on just one aspect of the UK’s relations with the world, in the guise of a dispassionate survey.

The uncomfortably mixed aims are evident in this year’s report more than most — and in the luxury of the presentation, for a start.

The report is illustrated with photographs clearly chosen for their artistic composition — even beauty — and printed on paper so thick it is almost card. Yet it is supposed to record the most hideous side of human nature in some of the poorest countries on the planet.

This year’s edition is two months’ late, postponed because of the Beslan school siege in Russia, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said. Given that extra time, it is a shame that in a special tribute to Beslan in large type on page 4, the report calls President Putin “Prime Minister”; if that were, indeed, his status, the UK’s concerns about his authoritarianism would be less. (And it surely could have updated the front-page picture of Jack Straw wearing glasses, suddenly a quaint image since his adoption of contact lenses).

By its very nature, the exercise produces a lumpy result: chronicles of outright war sit alongside debate about sexual orientation and the Internet.

But this year is less satisfactory than most, because the political inspiration behind many judgments is so clear.

Straw argued yesterday that “states cannot protect human rights without fighting the threat from terrorism”. But the heart of the problem in this year’s report is that the Government’s pursuit of human rights sits awkwardly with the other political demands, including the Iraq conflict. Below are some of the main points where it does so.

IRAQ

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