UNITED NATIONS – The United Nations yesterday passed a resolution creating a new body to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission. America opposed the resolution, which established a 47-member Human Rights Council to replace the 53-member commission.

“We did not have sufficient confidence in this text to be able to say that the Human Rights Council would be better than its predecessor,” the American ambassador, John Bolton, told the General Assembly. He nevertheless signaled that America will not withdraw future support from the new body, a notion that Congress might oppose.

“Nobody is interested in seeing old wine in a new bottle,” the ambassador of Palau, Stuart Beck, told The New York Sun. The tiny Pacific island, along with the neighboring Marshall Islands and Israel, were the only countries that joined America in opposition to the new council in yesterday’s vote. “We are used to being in a tiny minority,” Mr. Beck said. “Here we are again.”

Israel “wanted a council that would take care of real problems,” Ambassador Dan Gillerman added. He reminded the General Assembly that under the Human Rights Commission “We suffered the indignity of double standards applied only to the Jewish state” and the proposed changes “fail to address” such issues.

After the vote, supported by 170 member states, the room burst into applause, aimed mostly at the Swedish president of the General Assembly, Jan Eliasson, who was the architect of the compromised resolution that created the new council.

In the last few days, Mr. Eliasson told reporters, he had been in “intensive consultations” with Cuba’s foreign minister, Felipe Perez Roque, attempting to dissuade the communist island from presenting amendments in yesterday’s vote. Such a motion, Mr. Eliasson feared, would undermine the creation of the new body.

Cuba’s U.N. ambassador, Rodrigo Malierca, said America worked behind the scenes to ensure that anyone opposing “the hegemonic domination plans of the empire” would be excluded from the new council. “We were never deceived by the loudmouthed objections of the Washington representatives,” he said. Cuba, however, voted in support of the resolution, with its allies, Venezuela, Iran, and Belarus, abstaining.

America could have used the right of reply to answer Cuban and Venezuelan accusations, Mr. Bolton said, “But on the other hand, why bother?”

Washington “will work cooperatively with other member states to make the council as strong and effective as it can be,” Mr. Bolton added. “We will be supportive of efforts to strengthen the council and look forward to a serious review of the council’s structure and work.” He told reporters later that no decision has been made yet on whether America will actually seek a seat on the new council.

Mr. Bolton is expected to address the House of Foreign Relations Committee today, facing skepticism over U.N. reform. Last June, the House passed the United Nations Reform Act of 2005, which conditions future funds to the U.N. on 46 specific reform measures. The chairman of the committee, Rep. Henry Hyde, a Republican of Illinois, and other committee members from both parties pleaded with Mr. Bolton to oppose the new commission.