US Wants Five Powers on Rights Body; Problems Loom 
By Reuters
January 3, 2006
The New York Times
Original Source: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-un-rights-usa.html


UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. Ambassador John Bolton wants the five Security Council powers to have a seat on a still-disputed new U.N. human rights body, a move bound to anger nations who believe the five already are too dominant.
Bolton told reporters on Tuesday that past traditions in the United Nations permitted the five powers to be included ``on any U.N. body they think it is important to serve on.''
He said he did not think that including the permanent five Security Council members -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China -- on the new human rights body should be written into its bylaws. But he said, ``We will have to address the circumstances as the negotiations on the reform of the human rights commission proceed.''
At issue is the next big reform of the United Nations, a proposed human rights council that would replace the discredited Geneva-based 53-nation Human Rights Commission, which often includes the world's worst rights offenders.
Bolton, who first mentioned including the five, known as the ``perm five'' or ``P-5,'' to the Washington Post and quietly to some diplomats, has been striving to place the five at the center of U.N. decision-making.
But the creation last month of a peace-building commission, aimed at stopping renewed warfare by helping war-torn countries once the fighting stops, almost failed because of insistence on close ties to the Security Council and a seat for the five.
Many developing nations, including Pakistan, India, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Egypt, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, voiced concerns at that time that the Security Council and especially its five permanent members had too much power. 
TRADE-OFFS
``It will not fly,'' said one council member, speaking on condition of anonymity. ``A human rights council doesn't have the relationship to the Security Council that the peace-building commission had and there was unhappiness over the P-5 role.''
The envoy said that unless Bolton engaged in some ''sophisticated trade-offs,'' it would be extremely difficult to secure membership of the five by formal or informal agreement.
The proposed human rights council would exist all year round rather than meet for six weeks annually in Geneva and be free to respond to gross human-rights violations.
It is to conduct reviews of the human-rights records of all its members, which Western countries hope will be elected by a two-thirds General Assembly vote,
Currently, the Human Rights Commission is elected from slates put forth by regional groups. In 2001 the United States was knocked off the commission for the first time since 1947 by France, Austria and Sweden but regained the seat a year later.
A Latin American diplomat, who also did not want to be named, said it was doubtful members would agree that the five powers should have a seat on the new council when negotiations resume on January 11.
He and others noted that one debate over membership was how frequently nations could be re-elected or whether they had to rotate every two years.
But time is short. The Human Rights Commission will probably hold its final session in March and April.
Asked if human rights criteria would apply to the five powers, Bolton said, ``The difference between five perms and everyone else is that they are permanent members and that is a political reality.''
``I think that the presence of the permanent five on any U.N. body makes it more serious and more likely to succeed over the long term and that includes in the field of human rights,'' Bolton added.