As the fanciest cruise ship in the multilateralist oceans continues its smooth sailing under the sure hands of Captain Annan, the chairs on the upper deck of the U.N. Titanic have just been rearranged. By April, Chief of Staff Mark Malloch Brown’s title will be Deputy Secretary General, it was announced Friday.

Ah, but here comes the iceberg: the replacement of the discredited Human Rights Commission with a smaller Human Rights Council is fast becoming a test case for Turtle Bay’s ability to change itself. And it is fast threatening to sink the entire enterprise.

Last week’s human rights reform plan could either be renegotiated immediately or delayed for months. A more likely option is a vote as early as this week, where the new council is expected to be approved by a sizable majority in the 191-member General Assembly. Only a small group, known fondly as The Mighty Micronesia Bloc, consisting of some Pacific island states, Israel, and America will likely vote nay.

In America, of course, there are always those who see that group as the bad guys. Even as the editorial board of the New York Times agreed with Ambassador John Bolton that the proposed reform is inadequate, President Carter told a New York audience last week that after consulting with human rights promoters who represent countries like Egypt, Pakistan, and Cuba, he had instructed Secretary of State Rice to overrule Mr. Bolton.

She did not. No one in the Bush administration could outflank Times editorials from the left. Now Mr. Carter prays for America’s loss, he said. But Turtle Bay can ill afford America’s opposition and its probable refusal to join the new Human Rights Council. Such an outcome will render the new body meaningless, not to mention penniless. It will also signal that the U.N. is about to follow its predecessor, the League of Nations, into history’s ashbin.

Some Europeans are therefore seeking a compromise to keep America on board. So far their attempts have failed because the plan offered by Mr. Eliasson will not improve anything in Geneva, where human rights are a game of political football and where the worst violators are protected. No improvement, in this case, means a sharp turn for the worse.

Mr. Annan was the first to envision this process of change in Geneva. His good intentions were announced last year in a booklet on U.N. reform titled “In Larger Freedoms.” Once put into practice, the good intentions ill-fitted the political realities of Turtle Bay.

Like a military commander who always blames his troops for strategic failures, Mr. Annan is expected to say the Secretariat is not responsible, pointing instead to member states. That was his excuse when discussing the oil for food debacle last year.

Meanwhile, as the negotiations for changing the human rights organization are going down in flames, on Tuesday Mr. Annan is expected to announce new plans for U.N. management reform, which have been kept under wraps lest they anger member states and Turtle Bay staffers who fear job losses and benefits changes.

And now, three new nominations to Mr. Annan’s inner cabinet were announced by spokesman Stephane Dujarric on Friday. In addition to the appointment of Mr. Malloch Brown, a Briton, as deputy director general, Alicia Barcena of Mexico, his erstwhile deputy, will become chief of staff, and India’s deputy national security adviser, Vijay Nambiar, will be brought in as Mr. Annan’s special adviser.

Mr. Malloch Brown is known to Sun readers as financier George Soros’s good friend, whose loyalty was rewarded by a nice living arrangement. He rents a large house right next door to his landlord, Mr. Soros, at a rate slightly below that of the previous tenant, and somehow beyond what Mr. Malloch Brown’s means, as a U.N. employee, seem to suggest he could afford. Now Mr. Malloch Brown’s salary is about to grow as he changes titles but remains the second most powerful operative at Turtle Bay.

The “reform” mantra has been chanted throughout the scandal-ridden U.N. for two years now. Mr. Annan has used it to rescue some small aspect of his personal legacy as a leader of an organization aimlessly sailing toward its twilight. Last Friday’s appointments, according to Mr. Dujarric, will “ensure that [Mr. Annan’s] executive office and the United Nations secretariat is able to carry out the full agenda remaining in his term,” which finishes at the end of 2006.

So it’s full steam ahead towards the ice.