UN General Assembly President Jan Eliasson said Friday he had decided to delay until early next week his plan to ask the 191-nation body to adopt a resolution on the creation of the human rights council, in the hope of winning U.S. support for the draft.

"We have a historic chance to get the human rights council. But I'm struggling to get a consensus, I want to have a consensus on this resolution. Human rights must be universally accepted, and the structure that we build must be universally respected and hopefully adopted by all," Eliasson told reporters.

Eliasson originally scheduled an assembly session for Friday to make a decision on the draft resolution, to which the United States is the only open opponent among the 191 UN member states.

Because of U.S. opposition, the General Assembly's fifth committee, which is in charge of UN budgetary affairs, failed to agree on a budget for the proposed new human rights body, diplomats here said.

Eliasson informed all UN member states of his decision to reschedule the assembly session for next week in a letter Thursday night.

"Some delegations have asked me to allow more time in order to further broaden support for my proposed text," he wrote. "I am confident that you will all use the time between now and then to ensure we can bring our work on this issue to a successful conclusion."

Replacing the Human Rights Commission with a human rights council is a major step to reform the UN human rights machinery agreed by world leaders at last September's summit in New York.

But the talks over the creation of the council have been deadlocked for months as both the developed and the developing countries have been bitterly divided over the composition, election method, criteria for the membership and size of the new human rights body.

Late last month, Eliasson came up with a compromise draft, which so far has gained public endorsement from the European Union, New Zealand, Japan and a lot of developing countries.

It is widely hoped that the new council would be set up before the existing Human Rights Commission convenes its annual session in Geneva next Monday, so that the transition process could begin soon after the session concludes.

Source: Xinhua