UNITED NATIONS – Five “rapporteurs” for the discredited Human Rights Commission, who yesterday published a report calling for the abolition of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, are “independent” and do not represent the United Nations, Secretary-General Annan said yesterday. Nevertheless, Mr. Annan then publicly endorsed the bulk of the anti-American findings in the report as his own.

“The basic point, that one cannot detain individuals in perpetuity and that charges have to be brought against them and be given a chance to explain themselves and be prosecuted, charged, or released, I think is common under any legal system,” Mr. Annan told reporters. “I think that sooner or later there will have to be a need to close Guantanamo. I think it will be up to the [American] government to decide, and hopefully to do it as soon as possible.”

Mr. Annan refused to take up a question on the subject by the New York Sun, because he disapproved of the editorial content of the newspaper. “Do answers to any of your questions make any difference to your paper? Next question,” the secretary general told the Sun in an apparent escalation of his policy of berating reporters who have criticized him and refusing to address their questions.

A version of the Sun’s question – on the degree of the secretary general’s endorsement of “rapporteurs” who pride themselves on independence from the U.N. system, and who represent a body so discredited, the U.N. Human Rights Commission, that Mr. Annan himself has called to overhaul it – was later picked up by another reporter.

“These individual experts who are appointed to make an independent assessment, and it is not the secretary general report, or the U.N. report, so we should see it in that light,” Mr. Annan acknowledged.

So-called “rapporteurs” are voted in by the 53-member Geneva-based Human Rights Commission for stints as independent watchdogs on various issue relating to human rights. Their work is independent and only reflects their own findings. They report once a year to the commission, which boasts members like Cuba, Zimbabwe, and Syria, and the commission then decides on recommendations emanating from the reports.

Rapporteurs are so independent that even their titles are self-styled. One of the five who signed yesterday’s Guantanamo report, Paul Hunt, for example, is a “special rapporteur on the rights of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.”

Among others who signed yesterday’s report are special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, Manfred Nowak, and chairman-rapporteur of the working group in arbitrary detention, Leila Zerrougui. All five have publicly been critical of the prison for terrorists at Guantanamo, blasting the facility in language almost identical to yesterday’s report in all their public appearances last year.

The findings are based almost entirely on uncorroborated accounts of former Guantanamo detainees. None of the rapporteurs visited the facility, although last year they heavily publicized their attempt to gain access to Guantanamo. The Pentagon allowed them to visit as long as they abided by the same rules observed by visiting press reporters and American legislators – some of whom have returned from Guantanamo with very critical reports on conditions in the facility.

Nevertheless, in a defiant public letter, the five Geneva-based human rights experts refused to accept the American conditions. In a letter last November, they said “principles” they have set as guidelines for their work were not accepted by America, and therefore they would not go to Guantanamo. “These principles apply to all fact-finding missions undertaken by the different special rapporteurs,” the letter said.

The main reason cited for declining the visit was that they were not permitted to interview detainees without being accompanied by American officials. However, in a December report made by Mr. Nowak and other rapporteurs about torture in China, there are indications that compromises were made in that very “principle” in order to gain, for the first time, access to Chinese jails. “Officials from [China’s] ministry of foreign affairs accompanied [Mr. Nowak] to detention centers in order to ensure unrestricted access,” the December 2, 2005 report says.

Mr. Annan last year promoted a major reform of the U.N., including a suggestion that the human rights commission would be replaced by a smaller, more accountable council. He has endorsed a system in which each candidate would have to be approved by two-thirds of the 192-member General Assembly, hoping to avoid the membership of representatives from countries with blatant human rights violations. Mr. Annan has not publicly said whether the institution of independent rapporteurs should remain in the new body.

“The issue for us,” American Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton told the Sun yesterday, “is that a reformed human rights council really does what I think the creators of the organization have intended, which is promote better human rights practices.”

But despite intensive negotiations in the general assembly all of last year, member nations are yet to agree on a human rights reform formula which would be acceptable by member states, some of whom fear losing the protection the current structure offers that ignores human rights violations in their own country.