A scheduled UN Security Council vote on whether to exempt US peacekeepers from
prosecution by a global criminal court has been postponed until Monday at the request of China.
The Security Council will still debate the resolution today which has been requested by nations supporting the new International Criminal Court - the world's first war crimes tribunal.
China told council members it had no instructions yet from Beijing on how to vote on the resolution, introduced by the United States on Wednesday. Similar resolutions were adopted over the past two years.
Among the 15 council nations at least four - Brazil, Spain, Germany and France - are expected to abstain. But US officials were confident they would reach the minimum nine votes needed for adoption.
The new court, the first permanent global war crimes tribunal, was set up to try perpetrators for the world's worst atrocities - genocide, mass war crimes and systematic human rights abuses.
The Bush administration maintains the court could be used for politically-motivated or frivolous suits against US troops and wants peacekeepers in UN-mandated operations excluded from prosecution if they are nationals of a country that did not sign up to the court.
But human rights groups say the action is unjustified so soon after the Iraqi prisoner-abuse scandal.
Mr Richard Dicker of Human Rights Watch said the United States was trying to push the resolution through after only 48 hours notice, so the issue would not overshadow efforts to get council backing for a resolution on the transition in Iraq.