By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, Jan 27 2000 (IPS)

Japan believes it is time for the United Nations to undergo reforms, but it will have to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council first before it can make a real push for any change.

Unfortunately, Japan has not gained much ground so far in its bid to become a Council member, a move that will pave the way for the country to play a leading role in the United Nations.

Just this month, a foreign ministry team asked but failed to get clear support from a Chinese delegation for Japan’s bid during one-day bilateral talks on UN issues.

China, said a Japanese official who briefed the press after meeting, “showed no change in its position….” He said China expressed “its understanding of Japan’s wishes” but stopped short of offering its support.

The official said this was despite Japan noting how “difficult it is to gain sufficient public support for payment of its heavy 20 percent share of UN contributions when Japan’s bid to become a permanent member becomes unrealised”.

Indeed, top Japanese officials say the country’s acceptance into the Security Council is long overdue, considering that Japan is the second largest contributor to the United Nations.

Some bureaucrats have also argued that the country’s pacifist stance makes it all the more suitable for permanent Council membership, adding that it is also more than half a century since the end of the Second World War that dictated the terms of who gets to sit in the selected club.

Officials here argue that once Japan gets in, it will be easier for it to lobby for its proposed UN changes.

Says an official at the Foreign Ministry’s UN division: “The United Nations faces important reforms as the world enters the 21st century. With the end of the Cold War, there must be changes in the 50-year-old structure as the needs of the world are different.”

Among the UN reforms being promoted by Japan is a better system to promote development, one echoed as well by other developing-member countries of the UN.

But Japan also wants the Security Council expanded into one with a permanent membership of 10 countries. This would include Japan, of course, as well as Germany, the two countries that were the aggressors in the Second World War.

International observers say permanent membership in the Council will satisfy Japan’s long-held ambition to be restored as a world leader after its crushing defeat at the hands of Western powers at the end of World War II.

In his book, ‘Japan’s Quest for a Permanent Security Council Seat’, Reinhardt Drifte, head of the Japanese studies programme at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, says Japan has made the Council slot a focal point of its diplomacy throughout the postwar era.

Japanese diplomats, he observes, have keeping the issue simmering since the country joined the United Nations in 1956. Drifte says Japan’s remarkable economic resurgence after the war has fuelled that ambition all the more.

Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi has highlighted UN issues as among the major items to be taken up in the upcoming Group of Eight (G-8) summit that Japan will be hosting this July in Okinawa.

Among others, Obuchi has suggested conflict prevention as among the topics to be discussed in line with proposed reforms within the United Nations.

The discussions are expected to affect the upcoming Millennium General Assembly session of the world body this autumn in New York.

Yet even as Japan emphasises its pacifist position, the government has entered a domestic debate aimed at beefing up the role of the country’s Self Defence Forces (SDF). A “stronger” SDF is believed by some politicians to be a crucial factor in Japan’s admission to the Council.

But a military-strong Japan is not welcomed by the public. Discussions in December in the Diet on the possible lifting of a freeze on the SDF taking part in UN peacekeeping operations were shelved, because any talks on the issue were expected to take too much time.

Sophia University Professor Kuniko Inoguchi, an expert on UN issues, says the Japanese people’s support for their country’s bid to become a permanent member of the Council — and thus have a higher political profile to match its economic clout — may be growing. But the public draws the line on Japan taking on a military role, she says.

“Many younger Japanese brought up in economic prosperity do believe that Japan is ready to play a more active role in world affairs especially through the United Nations to which Japan pays a lot of money,” says Inoguchi.

“But at the same time,” she adds, “there is the consensus that Japan does not have to use guns but rather its economic muscle and technology to bring about a better world.”

According to Inoguchi, Japan must push for UN reforms but from a position different from the United States, one that will be much more popular here.

“If you give guns, like other powers, then the recipients will not drop their guns,” she argues. “But if you give developing countries money to eradicate poverty, which is the key cause to fighting, then it will be a more successful approach.”

Some of that thinking is already being seen in current government policy. Last year, a special fund was established to help neighbouring Asian countries resuscitate their flagging economies.

Japan has made much of being “Asia’s voice” in international organisations. On the eve of his trip to South-east Asia in January, Obuchi also said that Japan, as the only Asian nation among the G-8 club of richest countries, will represent Asian interests.

The new Japanese head of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), Koichi Matsuura, also promised to “reflect” Asian opinions since assuming his post there in November.

Another Japanese national has taken a key slot in the UN Transitional Administration for East Timor. In November, the United Nations appointed Akira Takahashi as second to the body’s UN Special Representative, Brazil’s Sergio de Mello.

Tokyo is also pushing for a Japanese to head an institution traditionally dominated by the west — the US-led International Monetary Fund, a seat that will be up for grabs next month.

During the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting with China, South Korea and Japan late last year, ASEAN pledged support for the Japanese candidate, former finance vice minister Eisuke Sakikabara.

Many analysts here concede that having a Japanese national succeed France’s Michel Camdessus stands little chance at present. But by floating his name, it is questioning the mindset that it does not ‘deserve’ to be considered to lead major global institutions.

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