The row over the failure of the US to retain its seat on the UN Human Rights Commission intensified yesterday with the National Security Adviser to the Bush administration, Ms Condoleezza Rice, describing the vote as an "outrage".
In a US television interview she said: "The sad thing is that the country that has been the beacon for those fleeing tyranny for 200 years is not on this commission, and Sudan is on this commission.
"It's very bad for those people who are suffering under tyranny around the world and it is an outrage," she said.
In a vote last week, the US failed to win a seat on the influential human rights body for the first time since it helped establish the group in 1947.
The US lost to Austria, France and Sweden, who were running in the same regional group of Western countries. Sudan, accused by the US of sponsoring terrorism, was also chosen to sit on the commission whose 53 members also include such countries as Libya, Algeria, Russia and Vietnam.
Only members of the UN's Economic and Social Council (Ecosoc) were entitled to vote on the composition of the human rights body. Ireland is not a member of Ecosoc.
There was some confusion in sectors of US public opinion which, unaware that the voting was conducted on a regional basis among the Ecosoc members, thought that UN and particularly EU member-states had chosen Sudan, a state accused of slavery, over the US in the election.
Ms Rice said it was "`very sad" that some US politicians had blamed the Bush administration for the election defeat. She claimed it was a case of human rights abusers seeking to avoid the scrutiny of the US.
"It's very sad that people, particularly on [Capitol] Hill, would decide to blame America for this. Obviously, the US has been too strong on the human rights agenda.
"I suspect that this was a backlash of those who don't like being judged, that perhaps the US has been a little too active on the human rights commission.
"We were very active in this most recent round and maybe it will be easier now for human rights abusers to escape scrutiny," she said.
UN sources suggested that the loss of the US seat may have been a reaction by European states in Ecosoc against the Bush administration's dismissal of the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
It also appeared that, unlike other UN members, the US does not deem it worthwhile to engage in the type of vote-swapping and reciprocal deals for support in different UN elections.
US officials were quoted as saying that they had received over 40 pledges of support, sufficient for a seat on the commission but in the end they received only 29 votes in the secret ballot.
The US finished in fourth place in the contest for three seats in the Western countries group: France got 52 votes, Austria 41 votes, Sweden 32 votes.
The US campaign for a seat may also have suffered from the fact that its new ambassador to the UN has not yet taken office.
The commission, a subsidiary of Ecosoc, is the principal intergovernmental policy-making body for human rights at the UN.
It is authorised to discuss human rights situation anywhere in the world and to examine information from states and other sources.