UN rights body suspends session over New York impasse

GENEVA, Mar 13 (Reuters) The United Nations Commission on Human Rights opened but then immediately suspended its annual session today to allow negotiators in New York more time to strike a deal on its successor body, officials said.

The 53-member Geneva forum took the decision by consensus in less than five minutes, agreeing to reconvene on March 20 to examine rights violations in the world.

Diplomats had hoped the UN General Assembly would reach a deal last week on creating a new Human Rights Council to replace the widely discredited Geneva forum -- where critics say rogue governments were able to protect each other.

But the United States opposed the plan on offer -- backed by the vast majority of UN member states -- leading General Assembly President Jan Eliasson last Friday to give UN members one final week to work out a deal for the Council.

''The negotiations in New York are complex and difficult,'' Manuel Rodriguez Cuadros, a former foreign minister of Peru who chairs the Commission, told a news conference.

''But I think that conditions are ripe for reaching a final decision there one way or another in the next days,'' he said.

The Commission would start its five-week annual session next Monday even if there was no agreement on the new rights body, he added.

It had been set to debate US treatment of security detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and also scrutinise the records of countries from Sudan to Israel and Uzbekistan.

But fears mounted in recent weeks that continuing disagreement over the Council would overshadow and paralyse the Commission's session, supposed to be its last ever.

The suspension is the first in the 60-year history of the Commission, better known for blocking criticism of abuses than for defending liberties, and for having given seats to nations like Sudan and Zimbabwe.

Washington wants strong barriers to membership on the new Council for rights abusers. US ambassador John Bolton has suggested the Assembly postpone a decision for several months.

But Eliasson has dismissed rewriting the Council plan, stating it would mean ''opening up a Pandora's box'' to renegotiate the delicately-balanced text.

New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch said the new body should be approved.

''Our position is that the package on the table represents a substantial improvement over the Commission and is the best we are going to get,'' its special counsel Reed Brody told Reuters.

''Our concern is while villages burn in Darfur and houses are demolished in Zimbabwe we need a U.N. body that is going to respond ... While the US plays hard ball the victims are left without protection,'' he said.

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