As US objects, UN forms rights unit

UNITED NATIONS -- The UN General Assembly yesterday overwhelmingly approved the creation of a new council to protect human rights, despite the outspoken opposition of the United States.

The US ambassador, John R. Bolton, had launched a concerted campaign against the new council. He argued that it did not go far enough to exclude countries accused of abusing human rights.

But after five months of intense negotiations and weeks of US brinkmanship, 170 nations voted to form a new council. Only Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau joined the United States in opposing it. Iran, Venezuela, and Belarus -- countries the United States has accused of human rights abuses -- abstained.

In a speech to the assembly, Bolton conceded defeat and suggested that the United States might seek a seat on the new council and would financially support it -- a far less extreme position than the Bush administration has taken on the International Criminal Court, which it has shunned.

''The United States will work cooperatively with other member states to make the council as strong and effective as it can be," Bolton said.

Still, the US position ruffled feathers at the United Nations. Jan Eliasson, president of the General Assembly, had delayed the creation of the council for weeks in an effort to persuade the United States to support it.

In the end, Washington never wavered in its objection and called for the formal vote as a forum to voice its opposition.

Observers said the vote, seen as a bellwether for how difficult it will be to overhaul other parts of the UN, showed that the United States -- or at least ambassador Bolton -- is willing to oppose the entire world to make a point.

''It is unfortunate that the United States found itself virtually alone in New York and was unable to join consensus," Timothy E. Wirth, president of the UN Foundation, a private charity that promotes the UN's work, said in a statement. But he added: ''It is a positive sign that the United States did not make the mistake of abandoning the Council altogether."

Yesterday's vote dissolves the current Human Rights Commission, once chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, that produced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Formed in 1946 and heralded with advancing human rights, the commission had been discredited in recent years when countries like Sudan, Zimbabwe, Burma, and Cuba, joined it in order to block punishment by the council over their own abuses.

The new council reduces the number of members from 53 to 47. Members will be chosen by secret ballot in the General Assembly, beginning on May 9. Members of the outgoing commission were selected by regional groups without a General Assembly vote.

Candidate countries must now demonstrate a commitment to rights, and members can be suspended with a two-thirds majority vote if they commit gross and systematic rights violations. All council members are subject to a peer review of their human rights records in the General Assembly within three years of election.

The first meeting of the new council is scheduled for June 19 in Geneva.

It will meet for 10 weeks.

''This gives the United Nations the chance -- a much-needed chance -- to make a new beginning in its work for human rights around the world," the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, said in a statement.

Dozens of human rights groups backed the new council, saying it was not perfect but the best compromise that could be struck.

Yesterday, Yvonne Terlingen, the UN representative for Amnesty International, called the vote ''a victory for human rights protection around the world."

Bolton's opposition to the council caused some rights advocates to question the US commitment to the success of the body.

Bolton, an critic of the United Nations, first criticized the proposal because it did not guarantee a place for the United States, which voted off the old Rights Commission in May 2001 in an embarrassing episode for Washington that reflected resentment among foreign countries.

Bolton dropped that demand but continued to push for other major changes to the text.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Eliasson in recent weeks and told him that the United States would still participate in the new council, even if the United States voiced symbolic opposition to the proposal, Eliasson told reporters yesterday.

In recent weeks, according to a US official in Washington, Bolton received a State Department cable signed by Rice instructing him to push for only two US demands -- that the new members of the council be elected by a simple two-thirds majority and that the worst abusers be explicitly excluded.

Bolton continued to insist on a renegotiation of the proposal, a move that many feared would doom the process by opening up new demands from countries with questionable rights records.

Lauria contributed from the United Nations; Stockman from Washington, D.C.