UNITED NATIONS: Japan, Germany Hit Roadblocks Over Security Council

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 12 1996 (IPS) - Disagreements persist among countries at the United Nations over how to expand and restructure the powerful Security Council.

Japan and Germany may already have hit a major roadblock in their attempts to grab two permanent seats complete with veto powers. Some developing nations say they are opposed to the two countries as candidates.

Ambassador Prakash Shah of India fears Western countries may deprive developing nations of key seats on the grounds that they remain unable to decide who their candidates should be.

“Since developing countries are divided among themselves,” he says, Western governments may say, in effect, “Let us forget about them and bring Japan and Germany as permanent members, while keeping the issue of developing countries open.”

Following nearly two years of closed-door sessions, a 185- member U.N. Working Group discussing the reform of the Security Council has failed to reached agreement on how the politically important U.N. body should be restructured.

The Working Group has generally agreed that there should be about five new permanent seats in a revamped Council. Of the five, three seats are to go to Asia, Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean, with the remaining two to Germany and Japan. The two industrialised nations are considered logical candidates because of their political and economic clout in the world.

But at least seven countries are battling it out for the regional seats: India and Indonesia (for Asia), Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt (Africa) and Brazil and Argentina (Latin America and the Caribbean).

The need for restructuring has been prompted by the fact that the existing Council is heavily weighted in favour of industrial nations and is not representative of the 185-member world body, where an overwhelming majority is from developing nations. The Council currently has five veto-wielding permanent members (Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States) and 10 non- permanent members, elected for two-year terms on a geographical basis.

Ambassador Razali Ismail of Malaysia told IPS that it would not be an easy task to find a compromise or consensus in reforming the Security Council.

“Reform of the Security Council, however, does not mean adding only Germany and Japan,” he said, noting that “This is unfortunate because Japan is certainly more qualified than one or two members already in the Council.”

The reform process should be part of a larger package, because “there will be strong resistance to just two countries getting into the Council,” he pointed out.

When delegations talk about the pre-selection of Japan and Germany on the grounds that they have the “capacity and willingness” to contribute to global peace and security, “what do they mean?” asked Shah. “Willingness is easy to express,” he said, but “capacity and contribution” have to be judged on the basis of the size of the country, its prospects, its population, its economic strength, its military capabilities, its scientific and technological achievements, and its intellectual and conceptual inputs.

Razali argued that capacity and contribution could also be judged on a country’s contribution to the achievements of the United Nations, to U.N. peacekeeping operations, and on its industrial and agricultural growth, and its active participation in international conferences.

“It is ironic that those who pre-select two industrialised countries are the most reluctant to indicate, on which of these criteria they have based their judgement,” he said.

Pakistan has voiced strong opposition to a permanent seat going to Germany, saying that there would be an “over-representation” of the European Union (EU) in the Security Council. Britain and France already hold permanent seats.

Ambassador Ahmad Kamal of Pakistan said the EU has been increasingly taking a collective stance both within and outside of the United Nations, harmonising its laws, its foreign policy and even seeking to create a common currency.

“How then does such a single, coordinated Union justify its two permanent seats on the Security Council and the desire of some of its members for a possible third?” Kamal told the Working Group recently. “Surely, the old days of multiple seats for single entities are over,” he said. “We cannot accept three EU members in the Security Council.”

Kamal said the United Nations should take a closer look at who these permanent members are, or should be, “and whether they have any continuing right to a membership of the club to which they belong.” In an implicit reference to Britain and France, he said, “Some of them have seen their fortunes change sharply in the past 50 years or so, and have been overtaken by others.”