(Recasts with more quotes, background) By Richard Waddington GENEVA, Dec 13 (Reuters) - The new U.N. human rights watchdog agreed on Wednesday to send a high-level mission to Sudan's Darfur to probe allegations of worsening abuse in what activists called a "timid" first step to confront the crisis. The 47-state United Nations' Human Rights Council, after a first special session on Darfur, approved a consensus plan that called for the dispatch of five "highly qualified" team members along with the world body's special Sudan investigator. The Council, launched in June as part of U.N. reform, was under pressure to show it can act effectively on Darfur where aid officials say more than 200,000 have died in violence over the past three years. "I think that we can be proud of this result," Finland's ambassador Vesa Himanen said on behalf of the European Union, which had initially pressed for stronger language about what top U.N. officials say is widespread abuse -- rape, pillage and murder -- in the west of Africa's largest state. But Council chairman, Luis Alfonso de Alba of Mexico, who will name the team, said the main point had been to agree on sending a mission and not issue words of condemnation. "The United Nations frequently passes statements ... this time we are trying to go beyond that," he told journalists following the two-day meeting. The United States, which has been heavily critical of the Council and has so far declined to join the Geneva-based body, gave guarded approval. "We find today's decision a welcome first step that can be built upon to lighten the suffering of the people of Darfur," said U.S. ambassador Warren Tichenor, whose government talks of "genocide" in Darfur. SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES Top U.N. officials, including Secretary-General Kofi Annan, had pleaded with the Council, which until now had only held special sessions on the Middle East to condemn Israel, to send a clear message that it was ready to act on Darfur. In New York, was pleased the council had "taken robust action to address the grave human rights situation in Darfur," said his chief spokesman, Stephane Dujarric. "The decision of the Human Rights Council sends a united message that the ongoing violence and killing in Darfur is unacceptable and must stop," Dujarric said. The U.N. says that the situation there, where over 2 million people have been driven from their homes since a simmering ethnic conflict became war in 2003, has worsened, with violence against civilians by armed militias an everyday event. Khartoum and its backers on the Council, brushing aside these reports, say that things have improved since a peace treaty earlier this year with one leading rebel group. Calling for an "accurate, balanced and objective" mission, Sudan's representative at the session Farah Mustafa said that it would have "direct and serious consequences for our country." De Alba said Khartoum, which has accused both Western media and the U.N. of painting a distorted picture, would cooperate with the mission, which would take a few weeks to assemble. He was confident that Sudan would not follow Israel in withholding permission for an on-the-spot inquiry. South African Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu of South Africa called off a planned trip this week to the Palestinian town of Beit Hanoun, where 19 civilians were killed in November in Israeli shelling, because Israel did not give the go-ahead. Israel has never accepted a mission either from the Council or its discredited predecessor, the Human Rights Commission. Calling the decision a "timid response," rights group Amnesty International nevertheless welcomed the fact that the Council had "finally shown signs of parting company with the shameless lies and half-truths of the Sudanese government." Western diplomats say there is already abundant information available about what is happening in Darfur and the main point of a mission is to increase international pressure on Khartoum to accept U.N. peacekeepers for the region.
