UN General Assembly overwhelmingly approved, despite strong opposition from the United States, a new UN Human Rights Council on Wednesday to replace the widely-criticized Human Rights Commission.

The resolution was adopted by member states with 170 countries in favor, four against and three abstentions, among which the United States, Israel, Marshall Islands, and Palau voted against the resolution, and Iran, Belarus and Venezuela abstained.

Under the resolution, the Commission will be abolished on June 16, and the new Council will hold its first meeting on June 19.

By the terms of the resolution, the membership in the new Council would be based on equitable geographic distribution, and the 47 seats shall be distributed among regional groups with 13 from Africa, 13 from Asia, 6 from Eastern Europe, 8 from Latin America and Caribbean, and 7 from Western Europe and others countries.

The members of the council will serve for a period of three years and shall not be eligible for immediate re-election after two consecutive terms.

According to the resolution, the elections of the first members of the Council would take place on May 9, 2006, and that the first meeting of the Council shall be convened on June 19.

Formally presenting the draft resolution, General Assembly President Jan Eliasson said the text was in pursuance of the mandate given to the Assembly by the world leaders at the 2005 World Summit.

"Now it fell on the Assembly to fulfill the other main elements of the leaders' resolve to strengthen the United Nations human rights machinery, by creating a Human Rights Council," he said.

However, the resolution failed to get support from the United States as it insists that the present text has "deficiencies" and needs to be improved through fresh negotiations.

In explaining his no vote, US Ambassador John Bolton said "we did not have sufficient confidence in this text to able to say the Human Rights Council will be better than its predecessor."

Source: Xinhua