The UN's top human rights forum began what could be its final session ever, but the gathering was suspended immediately to give governments time to reach a deal on its replacement.

Peruvian Ambassador Manuel Rodriguez Cuadros brought down his gavel to end the meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission after just four minutes of purely procedural statements.

On Friday, Rodriguez Cuadros and member governments of the 53-nation commission agreed to put their annual six-week session on ice for a week because all 191 members of the UN General Assembly had still been unable to reach consensus on setting up a new UN Human Rights Council.

"The system of protection of human rights of the United Nations faces a situation of exceptional importance," Rodriguez Cuadros told the meeting on Monday.

Critics say that the commission, which was created in the late 1940s, has lost its way amid political horsetrading, that it is tarnished by the presence among its member states of notorious human rights abusers, and that it fails to tackle violations by powerful countries.

The General Assembly is expected to meet at UN headquarters in New York this week to try to find its way out of the impasse over the creation of the council.

A draft text already on the table there has broad support among member states but is opposed by the United States.

The draft calls for the council to have 47 members, elected by secret ballot by an absolute majority of the UN's 191 members. The panel would meet three times a year for a minimum of 10 weeks.

But Washington says that the current proposal would simply perpetuate the faults of the commission.

"It would be too easy for countries that are habitual violators of human rights to get onto the Human Rights Council," Kevin Moley, the US Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, told reporters.

"We're not interested in rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. The commission has been a failure," he said.

The United States wants a smaller body whose members would be elected by a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly, and has indicated that it would prefer a delay of months in addressing the issue.

It was not immediately clear if the commission session in Geneva would go ahead as scheduled from March 20 if the General Assembly failed to strike a deal in New York over the coming week.

(Chinadaily.com via agencies March 14, 2006)