UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, as well as major rights groups, said the compromise draft resolution, unveiled on Thursday by assembly President Jan Eliasson, fell short of their proposals for a smaller, stronger body to name and shame abusers and help nations devise rights laws.

But they said it was an improvement over the discredited Geneva-based Human Rights Commission -- where human rights violators such as Libya, Sudan and Zimbabwe had seats and prevented action against other abusers.

"It's not everything we asked for, but I think it is a credible basis to push ahead," said Annan, who proposed the new council in March. "The member states have had enough time to discuss it ... and now is the time for a decision."

However, US Ambassador John Bolton said one option was opening negotiations among governments rather than Eliasson's system of intermediaries or facilitators to sound out nations. He said Washington would review the issue.

"The facilitator process is a process where everybody talks and then the oracle thinks about it and then comes up with the text as opposed to international negotiations where you put a text on the table and mark it up," Bolton told reporters.

"That has not really occurred and that is something we'll now have to consider launching to see if we can correct the deficiencies in this draft," he said.

"The strongest argument in favour of this draft is that it's not as bad as it could be," Bolton added.