(Recasts with press launch quotes) By Paul Majendie LONDON, May 23 (Reuters) - The politics of fear have provoked a "human rights meltdown" and created a dangerously divided world, Amnesty International said on Wednesday. "Our world is as polarised as it was at the height of the Cold War and in many ways far more dangerous," Irene Khan, secretary-general of the human rights pressure group said in its latest annual report. But she said fear had been a positive motivator for change over global warming, with politicians being forced into action by public pressure. The same tactic could work with human rights. Pointing an accusing finger around the globe from Washington to Harare, Amnesty blamed governments for undermining human rights and feeding racism with short-sighted, fear-mongering and divisive policies. "Human rights meltdown today needs to be tackled through global solidarity and respect for global values," she told a news conference launching the report. Khan said fear was being used to erode the rights of people -- all in the name of greater security. "The politics of fear are fuelling a downward spiral of human rights abuses in which no right is sacrosanct," Khan said in the 2007 dossier from the pressure group which boasts 2.2 million members in more than 150 countries. Amnesty accused U.S. President George W. Bush of invoking the fear of terrorism to enhance his executive power. "The U.S. administration's double speak has been breathtakingly shameless," it said. "The 'war on terror' and the war in Iraq, with their catalogue of human rights abuses, have created deep divisions that cast a shadow on international relations," said Khan. Bemoaning the loss of U.S. moral authority around the globe, Khan told reporters at the report's launch "The U.S. administration is treating the world as one giant battlefield for its war on terror." DARFUR A BLEEDING WOUND The pressure group said the Sudanese government was running rings round the United Nations over Darfur where the world body says at least 200,000 people have died in the conflict. "Darfur is a bleeding wound on the world's conscience," Khan told reporters. Amnesty said Australian Prime Minister John Howard's government had raised a false alarm by portraying desperate asylum-seekers in leaky boats as a threat to Australia's national security. Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe played on racial fears to push his own political agenda and grab land for his supporters, Amnesty said. The human rights update makes for grim reading -- from the prosecution of writers in Turkey to the killing of left-wing activists in the Philippines and soaring violence in Brazil. In Colombia and Cambodia, in Cuba and Uzbekistan, Amnesty said the Internet has become the new frontier in the struggle for the right to dissent. It said increasing polarisation had strengthened the hand of extremists with Islamophobia and anti-Semitism both on the increase. Fear feeds discontent and discrimination, it said. But after chronicling a catalogue of unremitting gloom, Amnesty did end its annual report on a positive note, stressing that human rights can be as effectively tackled as global warming if public opinion can be galvanised around the planet. "People Power will change the face of human rights in the 21st century. Hope is very much alive," it said.
