New York  - The UN General Assembly elected Wednesday 15 countries to serve three-year terms on the 47-nation Human Rights Council, including France and Britain, two of the seven seats for Western Europe.

The re-election of France was particularly watched because of its recent clashes with China on the issue of Tibet, and with Myanmar over its refusal to accept international relief aid for Cyclone Nargis victims. France had denounced those two countries for failing to uphold human rights.

France and Britain served on the Geneva-based council since 2006, when the body was established to replace the defunct and much criticized UN Commission on Human Rights. It was feared that France's strong stance on human rights would provoke countries with bad human rights records to vote against it.

Spain also competed for the two vacant European seats but was defeated, losing only by one vote to Britain's 120. France obtained 123 votes.

The winners all won more than the required 97 votes, the absolute majority votes needed in the 192-nation assembly. It took UN clerks close to two hours to count the paper ballots in the secret vote.

Slovakia and Ukraine won the seats for the Eastern European Group.

Japan, Bahrain, South Korea and Pakistan won in the Asian group.

Burkina Faso, Gabon, Ghana and Zambia won in the African group.

Argentina, Brazil and Chile won in the Latin American and Caribbean group.

After the vote, French UN Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert told reporters that his government was "rejoiced of the confidence given to us by other countries."

"We are very happy to be able to continue to work to consolidate the Human Rights Council, which is vital for the human rights pillar of the United Nations," Ripert said.

Ripert's counterpart, British Ambassador John Sawers said, "We are determined to use this second mandate to continue to build up the Human Rights Council as the body that can effectively extend the human rights values across the world."

Before the assembly's vote, human rights groups had urged the UN to eliminate some countries with the worst human rights records. Some were eliminated, including Sri Lanka. But other countries with bad records were elected, like Gabon, Zambia and Brazil. (dpa)