Earlier this week, the buzz coming out of Turtle Bay said that the President of the General Assembly, the Swede Jan Eliasson, will issue a new and improved draft proposal outlining the mandate and membership criteria for a new human rights council. The number of days in the week, however, are rapidly dwindling, and there’s still no new proposal to replace the discredited human rights commission.

Meanwhile, the spoilers are working hard to derail progress on that front. Cuba’s state run media — which is happy with maintaining the status quo — issued a rather bizarre denunciation of US efforts towards creating the council, saying “there has been a lot of pressure in recent weeks to create this agency in line with the imperial interests proclaimed in the so-called Project for a New American Century, Washington’s plan to dominate the world.” And the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) proposed adding language to the draft proposal to "prevent instances of intolerance, discrimination, incitement of hatred and violence arising from any action against religions, prophets, and beliefs."

Hopefully, Cuba’s paranoid obsession with the PNAC folks on 17th and M, and the OIC’s proposal to ban apostasy are simply the last ditch efforts of determined spoilers. But should member countries fail to agree upon a newly mandated council by mid March, the spoilers will have achieved a major victory. Then, the bad old human rights commission meets for its annual six week session and progress can be indefinitely delayed.

Given the crunch for time, this may be the opportune moment for the US to bring in the big guns. For the last six months, Bolton has been unable to inspire progress on the human rights council on his own. His zero-sum negotiating style has stifled movement on the council in the past, and some of his proposals, such as automatic council membership for the P-5 security council members, have been downright unhelpful. Perhaps the time has come for Condoleezza Rice to step in and do the job that Bolton, obviously, cannot.