Human Rights Council loves Cuba...

Yes, we know the mantra....Israel bad...Cuba good...

Cuba hailed itself on Thursday as a paradigm for the respect of human rights, at a UN Human Rights Council session where it succeeded in keeping a cap on critical voices.

"The promotion and protection of human rights are guaranteed" on the communist Caribbean island, its justice minister Maria Esther Reus said at the start of a review in Geneva of its human rights record.

She stressed respect for social and cultural rights in Cuba, and denied that Havana holds any political prisoners - a view challenged by Amnesty International, which says it has 58 Cuban dissidents behind bars.

Cuba went under the microscope as part of a UN procedure known as universal periodic review, whereby each of the 192 member states of the United Nations get their human rights records scrutinised in turn.

No fewer than 103 countries put themselves down to speak during Thursday's three-hour debate. But time constraints meant only about 60 got the floor - of which only about a dozen were critical of Cuba.