UN General Assembly to vote Tuesday on biennial resolution that non-war killing is bad; sexual orientation dropped for first time since 1999;Arab and African nations to blame

"Friction" map compiled from 11 data sources by European Union’s
Global Environmental Monitoring Unit. It's  a measure  of travel difficulty
to population centers based on data including road networks, water bodies,
elevation, and more. The map was created for the World Bank Development
Report 2009, which examines the effects of geographic concentration
on income and production.

The U.S. government says it is "incensed" (as are gay rights advocates) at the fact that Arab and African nations, at the committee level, have dropped specific references to sexual orientation usually included in the UN's biennual condemnation of extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary killings.

Mark Kornblau, spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said the United States will introduce an amendment next week to restore the previous language including the phrase "sexual orientation" because "this is an issue that is important to us."

"We've also been doing a great deal of lobbying" to get the restoration of the phrase approved, Kornblau said.

Gay rights and human rights activists also have been lobbying missions to the U.N. in New York in recent days, urging especially those delegations that abstained on the amendment to help restore the mention of sexual orientation.

"We only need a few more countries and we can change this vote around," said Boris O. Dittrich, who directs the program on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights for the international advocacy group Human Rights Watch.

States opposed to protecting sexual orientation from arbitrary execution:

Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belize, Benin, Botswana, Brunei Dar-Sala, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, China, Comoros, Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Republic of Tanzania, Uzbekistan, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe