Category:Lung cancerWASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Wednesday the United States will be moving away from a policy of lecturing other countries on human rights and democracy and will instead seek out opportunities for “strong and positive relationships.”
Tillerson also said the U.S. will work with all nations to defeat violent extremist groups and that the U.S. commitment to “the Middle East peace process” remains strong.
He made his comments in response to a question at a news conference during his visit to Saudi Arabia.
Tillerson has angered human rights advocates by saying in speeches that American foreign policy is not driven by human rights.
He said he views a human rights-driven foreign policy as “counterproductive.”
“America is a strong nation and we’re not going to spend our time lecturing other nations on how they should live and how they should behave,” Tillerson told reporters Wednesday.
Tillerson noted that although human rights is “a part of our foreign policy,” it isn’t the driving force behind our foreign policy.
“One of the problems I see is that when you try to drive foreign policy based on human rights or freedom or democracy, that is counterproductive,” Tillerson said. “Our best efforts will be focused on strong and positive relationships with other nations and we will find those opportunities. We will not be focused on trying to bring other nations into alignment with our particular set of policies.”
Tillerson’s comments came during a joint news conference with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman with U.S. national security adviser H.R. McMaster and other senior administration officials.
The statements Tillerson made about human rights are particularly offensive in countries like Saudi Arabia, where government critics and activists have been arrested and sentenced to death.
Among those arrested in Saudi Arabia is a teenage activist and blogger who has been held in jail for nearly a year on the charge of “inciting public hatred” — a vague charge often used to silence critics. The Saudi government is currently holding at least 14 other activists in an undisclosed location.
Human Rights Watch, a New York-based international advocacy group, recently released a report criticizing the Saudi government’s crackdown on the country’s human rights advocates.
“Human rights activists are regularly targeted for their peaceful efforts be359ba680
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