WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama’s administration announced Tuesday it will run in May for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council — a body shunned by his predecessor.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said the United States wanted a seat to help reform the body from within.

Conservatives, who say the Geneva-based body routinely denounces Israel but ignores human rights abuses elsewhere, were quick to criticize the move.

“This decision surrenders the strongest leverage we have to force changes in the council,” Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement. “Without reform first ... our participation would only grant legitimacy to the biased actions of a fundamentally illegitimate body.”

But Rice said the US was seeking a seat on the council “because we believe that working from within, we can make the council a more effective forum to promote and protect human rights.”

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the new administration’s decision as “an important step toward realizing the goal of an inclusive and vibrant intergovernmental process to protect human rights around the globe.”

“Human rights are an essential element of American global foreign policy,” Clinton said in a statement. “We believe every nation must live by and help shape global rules that ensure people enjoy the right to live freely and participate fully in their societies.”

In a conference call with UN correspondents, Rice pledged that if elected, the United States would work to reform the body when it faces a review in 2011 of its structures and procedures.

“We’re very committed to bring about the serious reform that the council needs,” she said. “The principal problem is there has been too little focus on the most egregious abuses of human rights ... and too much focus, unbalanced focus we believe, on other issues that don’t merit the amount of time,” she added. “Yes, of course, we mean Israel.”

The next round of elections to the council will be held on May 15 in the UN General Assembly in New York when members will be elected to a three-year term.

The administration of President George W. Bush opposed the council after it was set up in March 2006 and refused to be a member. It said the body had lost credibility because of its repeated criticism of Israel and what it called a failure to confront major rights abusers.

But critics abroad said the United States, during Bush’s term, lost credibility on human rights over alleged torture of terrorism suspects in the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and in Iraq.

New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) called the move a step toward more engaged and effective US leadership on human rights. “Active involvement by the US will bring new energy and focus to the Human Rights Council’s deliberations and actions, helping it become a more credible force for human rights promotion,” said HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth.