UN-LATAM: Battle for Security Council Seat Heats Up

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 22 1997 (IPS) - Latin American nations have begun jockeying for position to fill a promised seat on the U.N. Security Council.

Brazil’s foreign minister, Luiz Felipe Lampreia, assured the diplomats gathered for the opening of the 185-nation General Assembly’s 52nd plenary Monday that his country is willing “to accept the responsibilities of permanent membership in the Security Council, if it is called upon by the international community to do so.”

By contrast, Chile’s foreign minister, Jose Miguel Insulza, listed his country’s accomplishments during its current, two-year term as a non-permanent member of the 15-nation Security Council. “Our decision to participate was motivated by the need to assume our international responsibilities, and we did so in the conviction that we could make an important contribution,” he added.

The broad hints by the two officials is just part of a campaign in which several Latin American nations are eager to press their credentials in the event that the Assembly approves a new, expanded Council with a permanent seat for their region. Mexico and Argentina also are vying for that position, and will present their own arguments later in the plenary.

The question is whether the region will be able to decide amicably on a candidate or, alternately, whether the “permanent” Latin American seat can be rotatted among several nations rather than just one.

What is clear is that, if the region agrees on conferring the seat on one country without any rotation, that nation will enjoy a substantial boost in power. It would become the only Latin seat on a Council which currently boasts five, veto-holding permanent members: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States.

The key point, said Insulza, is that the Latin American and Caribbean region must consult among its members to decide who obtains the seat, before the candidate is presented to the General Assembly. He added that the possibility of designating only one country to be permanent member should be considered, but the Chilean envoy also argued in favour of any alternative that could provide “adequate regional representation.”

That option is not so appealing to Brazil, which clearly regards itself as the front-runner for a Latin American seat. “We repudiate all discrimination in the conception or assignment of new seats,” Lampreia declared, and he dismissed any idea of rotation or that the new permanent members may not hold veto powers.

“This (discrimination) would weaken and depreciate the participation of the developing world,” he said.

With more than 160 million people, Brazil is the most populous country in the region, and has enjoyed generally high international prestige under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. But the Portuguese-speaking nation is the odd man out in a largely Spanish- speaking region, and faces substantial opposition from its former nemesis Argentina.

As a result, Lampreia is here to sell the idea that Brasilia can represent the entire region fairly. “We want our region to be present in the Security Council on a permanent basis, and, through, ample coordination and consultation, to have an even stronger voice,” Lampreia told the Assembly.

Still, Brazil faces several hurdles before it can win a permanent seat. The entire plan to expand the Security Council has been stalled for years. Only recently, with the United States’ acceptance that three permanent developing seats – for Asia, Africa and Latin America – should be included along with slots for Germany and Japan, did countries make headway toward a consensus on expansion.

Yet even that expansion plan has stalled on the question of how many non-permanent members, which are voted in for two-year terms by the Assembly, the new Council will have. Washington wants a Council of no more than 21 members: 10 permanent, and 11 rotating. Many countries, including Chile, support an expansion to 25 seats, 15 of them rotating.

Even after that dispute is resolved, dozens of countries expect to block the current Council expansion plan either out of principle or because of regional politics. Italy has long opposed any idea of German inclusion as a permanent member, while Pakistan wants to block any expansion plan that could aid its rival, India.

For Latin America, this has meant that, while Brazil participated in an ad hoc group chaired by Ambassador Razali Ismail of Malaysia to develop a Council expansion plan, Mexico and Argentina have worked with another group of nations opposed to any Council expansion.

Both Mexico and Argentina currently want an expansion only of non-permanent members, a Latin American diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity. But both countries, he added, would push for a “permanent” seat that rotates among all the Latin American and Caribbean nations if a permanent seat is approved by the Assembly.

That process, the envoy explained, would have to include “all Latin Americans,” perhaps holding rotating four-year terms. “We could never go and say that we should have a rotation among just Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, because the region would say, ‘The argument that you are applying to Brazil, you are now using to your benefit’,” he argued about the idea that only large countries should hold the seat.

Of course, such a plan could give some nations only about as many years in the Security Council as they already have – or even less, given the length of time the rotation would take. That could well be a definition of “permanence” that Brazil finds unacceptable.