It was a very busy day today on First Avenue. As Scott and Steve have written, Bolton signaled his clear opposition to the current draft proposal for a Human Rights Council this morning—and did so at a press stakeout following a Security Council meeting he chaired on possible sanctions for those responsible for keeping Darfur a-fire. Quite tellingly, the differences between how Bolton has approached these two situations could have hardly be more grand; one represents the aggregation of numerous failures of American diplomacy during the UN reform negotiations, the other is a hopeful sign that the US may show real global leadership in confronting the first genocide of the 21st century.

(Fair warning to the reader: below the fold is a rather lengthy aggregation of some of my thoughts on these two subjects that I mused about over on Tapped earlier.)

Let’s start with the Council: Bolton’s objections to the current Human Rights Council draft are manifold, but he seems to have presented two immutable red lines that the other 190 countries must adopt before the US can sign on to the document.

The first says that member states that are under UN sanction should be automatically excluded from membership in the Council. On the surface, this seems like a reasonable enough standard. But the pack of smaller developing countries feel that this provision is code-language for P-5 membership on the Council, and that it gives the Security Council too much control over Human Rights Council membership. While I’m tempted to say that Bolton’s position here is correct on its merits, the practical consequence of this provision is virtually nil; only two countries, Sudan and the Ivory Coast would be the only countries barred under this criteria.

Bolton’s second red line covers how member countries are voted into the club. The US contends that each Council member be elected by a two thirds majority of the General Assembly. Other countries with less weight to throw around (many of which are countries with dubious human rights records themselves) have argued that a simple plurality of votes should be necessary. In a compromise, the new text drafted by General Assembly President Jan Eliasson says that a country must earn the votes of an absolute majority of all member states in the General Assembly -- that’s 96 countries.

To be sure, the draft has its deficiencies, but there’s no reason to think that further negotiations will make it any better. Just the opposite is the case: should each member state with an objection to a portion of the document mark up the current draft with their own edits, the small progress that has been gained through this compromise text may be washed away. Though it’s not the alpha and the omega (to borrow a phrase I learned from the man himself) leading human rights groups, former Nobel peace prize winners, and all of our important allies, believe that this text is the last best hope for the Human Rights Council. Should Eliasson press ahead with a vote as promised, we may find the General Assembly to be a very lonely place this week.

Despite the opportunity for reform that the US is poised to let wither away, Bolton seems determined to not squander his month long presidency of the Security Council, which he has used to push for action on Darfur. As Irwin Arieff of Reuters reports today , the Security Council met this morning to discuss possible sanctions for some of Sudan’s top leaders. However, rather than talk about sanctions, China, Russia and Qatar decided to denounce that the list of names that a UN panel recommended for sanctions were leaked to the press.

As the original recipient of the leak, I suppose I could feel somewhat responsible for the deadlock. But I don’t. China, Russia, and Qatar are simply using the leak to as an excuse for holding up this latest round of Security Council work on Darfur. If were raining in New York this morning, they could have pointed to water falling from the sky as an excuse for inaction.

Thankfully, Bolton knows a thing or two about intransigence. And at a press stakeout this morning, Bolton issued this mild “condemnation” of the leakage.

The members of the Council were concerned about the leakage of the report and its confidential annex to the press and urged me to convey that to all of you, which I’m doing. Obviously the leakage can impair the work of the Council and the Committee…But make no mistake about it, the purpose of the committee, the purpose of the targeted sanctions mechanism in 1591 is to apply pressure, and I don’t think we should be ashamed to say it, to apply pressure to people who are violating the arms embargo, not contributing to our effort to establish an effective peace process in Darfur and to restore the deteriorating security situation.

He went on to warn that the Security Council may see its credibility decline should member countries balk on the question of sanctions. He’s absolutely correct.