Bolton wants 'Perm-5' on U.N. rights panel
By Bradley Brooks
January 3, 2006
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Original Source: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1101AP_UN_Rights_Reform.html

UNITED NATIONS -- The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. pushed Tuesday for all five permanent Security Council members to have the right to sit on a new Human Rights Council.
Negotiations to replace the present rights council is now the dominant reform topic at the U.N. Past rights councils have included notorious human rights abusers such as Zimbabwe and Cuba. The panel now has 53 members.
U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said the permanent council members - United States, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom - should also be on the Geneva-based rights panel would make it a better watchdog of human rights.
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 said.
Negotiations on the Human Rights Council resume Jan. 11.
The size of the proposed Human Rights Council and even how its members would be elected is still being debated. But negotiations must finish soon, as the current commission will likely hold its last session this spring.
At present, regional groups nominate countries for inclusion on the council.
Bolton, who is pushing for top to bottom reform at the U.N., invoked the so-called Perm-5 convention - an unwritten, customary practice that allows any of the permanent five members of the Security Council to serve on any U.N. body they choose.
In return for this privilege, Bolton pointed out, those permanent members almost never push to serve as chairman of the U.N. bodies.
In other areas, the U.S. favors not expanding the number of permanent members on the Security Council. The five, all victors in World War II, have a veto on the security council, the U.N. body deciding questions of war and peace.
One concern about Bolton's push is that China and Russia - criticized by many for their own human rights abuses - would be able to sit on the Human Rights Council.