WASHINGTON - The United States, taking a wait-and-see approach to a controversial new UN Human Rights Council, said Thursday it would pass up a seat this year but likely run for the body in 2007.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States would still back the work of the 47-seat council that Washington sees as flawed, but would give more enthusiastic countries a first crack at membership.
"The United States will not run for a United Nations Human Rights Council seat in the council's first elections scheduled for May 9, 2006," McCormack told a daily press briefing.
He said there were many strong candidates for the body and "we believe that it's only fair they have the opportunity to run for a seat on the council for which they have voted."
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan expressed disappointment with the decision, which drew criticism from a leading US congressional Democrat and the influential monitoring group Human Rights Watch.
But McCormack made it clear Washington was not abandoning the council, saying: "We're going to support its functioning politically, diplomatically, as well as financially, and we will also be an observer."
"With a strong collective effort in the coming months to make the council effective, the United States will likely run for the council next year," he said.
The United States will work closely with others to encourage the council to deal with serious rights abusers such as Iran, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Burma (Myanmar), Sudan and North Korea, he said.
President George W. Bush's administration had long criticized the previous 53-member UN human rights commission, saying it was ineffective and loaded with notorious abusers such as China, Cuba, Sudan and Zimbabwe.
The Americans pushed for reform but opposed the move to replace the old body with a council that would be elected by an absolute majority of the 191-member General Assembly.
Washington had insisted on a smaller grouping whose members would be elected by a two-thirds majority. In the end, it was one of the few dissenting votes in the 170-4 tally that created the Human Rights Council on March 15.
Eight countries are vying for seven council seats from the United States's "Western European and other states" grouping: US allies Britain, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Greece and Portugal, and neutral Switzerland.
Reed Brody, special counsel for Human Rights Watch, called the US decision not to seek a seat "childish" and suggested the Americans might have feared going down to an embarrassing loss in the vote.
"It's unfortunate that the Bush administration's disturbing human-rights record means that the US would have difficulty getting elected," Brody said. "This decision may be an effort to make a virtue out of necessity."
McCormack said Washington would actively campaign for countries it deemed worthy of inclusion on the council and actively oppose those it considered unfit.
The 35 countries that have declared their candidacies, according to the council's website, contain some criticized here for their human rights records such as China, Iran, Russia and Cuba.
All council members eventually will be elected for three-year terms. But US officials said some will initially be up for shorter mandates in order to stagger future votes -- giving the United States a chance to run next year.
Annan's spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the UN chief was "obviously disappointed" the United States would not participate in this year's election.
"However we very much hope that the US will continue to be an active player, to defend universal human rights and support the work of the Human Rights Council," Dujarric told reporters in New York.
The president of the UN General Assembly, Jan Eliasson of Sweden, also tried to be upbeat.
Eliasson welcomed the fact that "the United States will work cooperatively to make the council as strong and as effective as possible and that it will support and fund the council", his spokeswoman said.
But US Representative Tom Lantos, the top Democrat on the US House International Affairs Committee and founding co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, was "outraged" at the US move to forego a council seat.
"This decision represents a major retrenchment in America's long struggle to advance the cause of human rights around the world," he said in a statement. "This is a very sad day in the history of American diplomacy."

04/06/2006 19:41 GMT