UNITED NATIONS: Italy Sides with Third World on Key U.N. Reforms

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 23 1995 (IPS) - The developing countries have found an ally in Italy as the United Nations debates controversial proposals to restructure the U.N. Security Council.

Breaking away from the 15-member European Union, Italy is advocating the Third World cause. Ambassador Francesco Paolo Fulci says any restructuring should favour smaller states who have been shut out of the Security Council by the world’s major powers.

“The big brothers have been elbowing out the smaller brothers far too long,” Fulci told IPS.

Hubert Legal of France, current chair of the EU, said the Union has not taken — and will not even attempt to take — a common position on the restructuring of the 15-member Security Council, which currently has five permanent and 10 revolving members.

Any such attempt “will only end up in an acrimonious debate,” he said, adding that each of the 15 members was free to take its own national position on the issue.

Legal also denied that there was a move to earmark a separate seat for the EU, which includes France, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Greece, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Britain, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal and Ireland.

The proposals on the table include the addition of Germany and Japan as permanent Security Council members, a category now enjoyed by Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States. There is also a recommendation for the doubling of non-permanent members to 20.

But after nearly 14 months of discussions, the United Nations has failed to agree on how the new Council should be reconstituted. A Working Group of the General Assembly, comprising all 185 member-statesl is currently holding closed-door meetings on the issue.

An attempt to reach agreement in time for the 50th anniversary celebrations in October has been abandoned because of the sharp divisions in the world body. Opposing the proposal to accommodate Germany and Japan as permanent members, the Italian envoy said nearly 80 countries — including some of the founding fathers of the United Nations — have never sat in the Council. And of the 185 members in the world body, Fulci said, about 40 have served only once.

The signatories to the U.N. charter who never made it to the Council include Saudi Arabia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Luxembourg, the Dominican Republic, and South Africa.

Fulci said that any proposed restructuring should make the Security Council more efficient, democratic, and representative of the world body that is currently dominated by developing nations.

“Permanent membership should not continue to be the privilege of wealthy industrialised countries — all from the Northern hemisphere — who have no exclusive right to be the collective voice of the international community,” Fulci said.

Italy advocates keeping the five permanent seats intact, but says the non-permanent members should increase to 20.

“The problem of the United Nations today is to involve more member-states in the decision-making process, not to marginalise them,” the Italian envoy added. “Smaller countries do not have smaller rights. They have the same rights as the bigger countries.”

Developing nations fear the Third World may be left out in a revamped Security Council. India, Malaysia, Nigeria and Cuba have all expressed concern that piecemeal reforms of the U.N. system may shut out poorer nations.

“The reform of the Security Council does not mean just adding only two new permanent members,” Malaysian Foreign Minister Abdullah Haji Ahmad Badawi said last year. “We are interested in a restructuring of the entire U.N. system in a single package.”

India told the Working Group last month that wealth should not be a criterion for a permanent seat in the Security Council.

“We do not agree with the view expressed by a delegation that permanent membership is a privilege that can be purchased,” Ambassador T.P. Sreenivasan said, adding that contributions to the United Nations should never be measured in monetary terms.

He said since financial contributions were determined on the principle of “capacity to pay”, those who pay their assessments, however small, were no less qualified for privilege than the major contributors.