POLITICS-UN: Much Ado About Nothing

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 9 1997 (IPS) - The debate during 1997 on expanding membership of the U.N. Security Council has been predictable in one respect: for the fourth straight year, no action has been taken by the 185-nation General Assembly to change the Council.

Discussions during the past week in the U.N. General Assembly, however, have shown that as time goes by, still more plans on how the Council should be revamped are gaining support.

This year, proposals for Council reform ranged from plans to add five new permanent Council members to other proposals that attempted only to add non-permanent, rotating seats. The common thread joining all the plans is that none commands a clear majority among the 185 U.N. member states, and none seems likely to do so.

As long as that is the case, the Security Council is likely to remain a 15-nation U.N. executive body, boasting five countries – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – which have permanent membership and veto power.

“Today, a solution still appears as elusive as ever,” Italian Ambassador Francesco Paolo Fulco of Italy, which has been strongly critical of many expansion plans, said during the Council reform debate last week. “Positions remain far apart.”

Virtually every country says that status quo is unacceptable. “The status quo does not augur well for what is, and has always been, an urgent need to reform the Security Council,” said Tanazanian Ambassador Daudi Mwakawago, chairman of the ‘Group of 77’ developing nations coalition.

However, the one solution that seemed to gain support this year – to add permanent seats for Japan, Germany and one seat each for Asia, Africa and Latin America – did not break the logjam, despite the announcement this summer of U.S. support for the plan.

If nothing else, the Assembly’s paralysis on Council reform has shown the lack of support for any ‘quick fix’ solution that is designed primarily to bring Japan and Germany – two of the major U.N. contributors – onto the Council as permanent members but is less exacting on other details.

Cuban Ambassador Bruno Rogriquez Parrilla said his country would reject any formula “which intends to accommodate a quick fix solution, whatever its manifestation will be.”

Part of the problem came from the inability of nations in the developing world to pick out one candidate to represent each region, with front-runners like India and Brazil beset by regional rivalries as they tried to campaign for permanent seats. But another major problem has been that many diplomats are not convinced that the proposed permanent seats for developing nations will boast the same powers that the current five permanent members enjoy.

Two similar plans, backed respectively by the United States and by former General Assembly President Razali Ismail of Malaysia, offer regions an option of allowing their ‘permanent’ seat to rotate among a group of nations, rather than to be held by only one country.

Also, U.S. diplomats have been unwilling to say that Washington would give the veto power to any of the new permanent members – which could leave the veto only with its present five holders.

The result, Fulci argued, is that the revamped Council could have “three categories of permanent members: permanent members with the veto; permanent members without the veto (Germany and Japan); and pseudo-permanent members from the developing countries.”

Some countries have been wary of expanding the number of permanent seats entirely. “Any increase in permanent membership would serve the interests of only a few countries, and be to the detriment of small- and medium-sized countries,” said Ambassador Ahmad Kamal of Pakistan, which has worried about India’s chances for a permanent seat.

The plans favoured by Razali and the United States have lost steam in recent weeks, and German Ambassador Tono Eitel recently admitted that the pro-expansion nations were unable to offer any resolutions on Council reform to the Assembly because “we haven’t gotten our act together.”

Plans by both the pro- and anti-expansion groups to bring resolutions before the Assembly were quietly set aside last week, with no votes expected by January at the earliest – and most likely not until next autumn.

Even plans by some groups, including the Non-Aligned Movement, simply to expand the roster of nations which have rotating two- year terms on the Council (now set at 10 seats), have lagged because of the disputes over the permanent seats.

Meanwhile, as the Council expansion process drags on through its fourth year, new plans have circulated that add to the confusion but show little sign of winning wide acceptance. South African Ambassador Khiphusizi Jele argued that Africa must receive two permanent seats, each holding a veto – an idea which already has been accepted by 52 African nations.

Some countries, including Germany, have spoken in favour of ‘periodic reviews’ by which new members’ performance could be evaluated and memberships could be changed, but Russia (which inherited the Soviet Union’s permanent seat without any review) is cool to that idea. “So far, we have doubts that such reviews will, in fact, enhance the efficiency of the Council,” Russian envoy Alexandre Gorelick contended.

The General Assembly therefore ends the year on Council reform essentially as it began it: with no consensus for expansion. But not all diplomats are pessimistic about the process.

“We have come a long way from our initially rigid concepts of Security Council expansion,” Canadian Ambassador Robert Fowler said. Given the importance of the decisions on Security Council expansion, he added, “it is not surprising … that we have not come up with a definitive formula which has won general agreement.” For the countries wanting permanent seats, that may be small consolation.