UNITED NATIONS, April 28: The United States was set on Monday to regain its seat on the UN Human Rights Commission after a humiliating defeat last year for the first time since it helped found the body in 1947.

European Union countries Italy and Spain have pulled out of the race to make sure the United States runs for a safe seat among those reserved for Western nations on the 53-member commission that probes human rights abuses around the world.

The UN Economic and Social Council, parent body of the Geneva-based rights commission, scheduled the elections for Monday with many of the results decided in advance among regional groups.

Australia, Germany and Ireland will be elected along with the United States for membership in 2003, as representatives from the “Western European and Other States Group,” known as WEOG.

Last year’s defeat stunned the Bush administration with diplomats blaming the United States for poor lobbying, the then-huge debt Washington owed the world body and US rejection of global agreements, on arms, climate and others.

In the arcane machinations of UN elections, almost all committee chairmanships and other posts are divided among geographic groupings. If a group fails to agree on a slate, the seats are open to a vote.

The Western group last year could not agree on candidates and the full Economic and Social Council had to vote in a secret ballot. It elected, France, Austria and Sweden for three rotating Western seats, thereby squeezing out Washington.

The United States as well as Russia and India had served on the commission since its inception in 1947. Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was the commission’s first chair and the main author of its 1948 landmark Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The United States this year was not able to vote during the Geneva meetings but lobbied behind the scenes. The State Department expressed disappointment at the panel’s actions.—Reuters