HAVANA · In what is expected to be a characteristically close vote, the United Nations Human Rights Commission will determine whether to censure Cuba's rights record this week during its annual meeting in Geneva.

The commission is expected to vote as soon as today, although the motion could be delayed until Friday.

Presented by Honduras, the motion asks Cuba to comply with a previous resolution calling for a U.N. human rights monitor to visit the island. Officials in Havana have already rejected such a visit, stating the U.N. vote is manipulated by the United States to justify its 40-year trade and travel embargo.

The commission has censured Cuba nearly every year for the past decade. Last year, weeks after Cuban courts handed down harsh sentences for 75 jailed dissidents and independent journalists, the commission passed a mildly worded resolution by a four-vote margin. The close vote is generally preceded by weeks of lobbying by Cuban and American officials.

This year is no exception. President Bush called his Mexican counterpart, Vicente Fox, earlier this week, in part to discuss the U.N. vote on Cuba.

"They agreed on the importance of passing a Cuba resolution at that meeting and working together to improve the human rights situation," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said of the leaders' short phone conversation.

Mexican officials, however, had a different interpretation.

Agustin Gutierrez Canet, Fox's spokesman, said the White House version "does not coincide with Mexico's position, because Mexico has not made any decision on how it will vote on the proposed resolution."

In many Latin American countries, the U.N. vote on Cuba provokes bitter indignation from leftist constituencies that support President Fidel Castro's government and tout its universal health care and educational systems.

Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay have said they will abstain from this week's vote. El Salvador, Peru, Chile and Nicaragua plan to support the measure. Venezuela, Cuba's strongest regional ally, will vote against it.

In newspaper articles in the state-run media, Cuba has lambasted Latin American countries that support the Honduran motion.

The commission's censure carries no punitive measures. Still, motions criticizing a nation's human rights record are becoming increasingly difficult to pass, said Widney Brown, deputy program director for Human Rights Watch.

"You have countries getting on the commission who themselves are serious human rights abusers," said Brown in a phone conversation from Geneva.

The Associated Press was used to supplement this report.

Vanessa Bauzá can be reached at vmbauza1@yahoo.com.

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