UN poised to solve riddle of Security Council expansion

With a fresh push by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the United Nations and its 191 member states are poised to solve the riddle of the Security

Council expansion in 2005, a sticking point of the long-delayed UN institutional reforms.

The Security Council is the most powerful UN body, whose primary responsibility is to maintain world peace and security. Resolutions passed by it are legally binding on all UN member states.

For the past decade, the 191-nation General Assembly has been struggling to find ways of expanding the council, which was created almost 60 years ago amid the ruins of World War II.

Although all UN member states recognize that the council is out-of-date and should be reshaped to reflect the current balance of world power and the significant increase in the UN membership, they can not agree on how to revamp it.

The debate on how to update the UN body intensified last year after the United States, its most powerful member, invaded Iraq without the council's approval, dealing a heavy blow to the UN credibility and authority.

Spurred by the US unilateral action, Annan appointed a panel of 16 eminent persons in November 2003 to give recommendations on reforming the United Nations to prepare it for such 21st-century challenges as terror, nuclear proliferation, poverty and genocide.

The panel published a 95-page final report in early December last year, which called for a new collective security consensus and offered 101 recommendations for sweeping reforms of the UN system.

It proposed to expand the council to 24 members with six each from Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe under two alternative formulas. The present make-up is five permanent veto-bearing members and 10 two-year term elected members, half of which are replaced annually.

One of the two options would expand the number of permanent members to 11 from five and the number of those elected to two-year terms to 13 from 10. The other would create a new tier of eight semi-permanent members with renewable four-year terms and one additional conventional two-year term member.

Neither option, however, extends veto power beyond the existing five permanent members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- victors of World War II.

What's more, the panel set two criteria for selecting candidate countries for new permanent or semi-permanent seats. It said council reforms should increase the involvement in decision-making of countries that contribute most to the United Nations "financially, militarily and diplomatically," and those from the developing world, which make up a vast majority of the UN membership.

The panel embodied the criteria by suggesting that the General Assembly give preference for permanent or longer-term council seats to those states, which in their relevant regions are among the top three financial contributors to the UN regular budget, or the top three voluntary contributors to UN activities, or the top three troop contributors to UN peacekeeping missions.

UN officials said the panel's recommendations would help clarify the prolonged debate on the council's expansion and accelerate the negotiation process.

At the high-level assembly debate in September, eight regional powers -- Japan, Germany, Brazil, India, Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt and Indonesia -- indicated their readiness to vie for new permanent seats in an expanded Security Council.

The recommendations of the 16 wise men and women would apparently give a boost to the bid of the four front-runners -- Japan, Germany, Brazil and India -- which are either top financial contributors to the UN budget or major developing countries. The four formed an alliance to lobby for their permanent council seats.

Gunter Pleuger, German ambassador to the United Nations, told Xinhua that the group prefers the option of adding six permanent seats and hopes the General Assembly would reach an agreement on it before Annan presents his report in March.

Stressing that "time is short," Pleuger said he and ambassadors of Japan, Brazil and India met with Annan on Dec. 7 to plead him to push negotiations in the General Assembly.

In a sign of softening stance on the issue of veto power, the German ambassador said the group "in principle" hopes to gain the same status as the current five permanent members, but that it is ready to "compromise."

Pleuger said the four countries plan to put forward a draft resolution on the council expansion to the General Assembly anytime before mid-2005, depending on the progress in negotiations in the assembly.

However, it remains unknown whether opponents of increasing permanent seats are willing to back down. A group of medium-sized powers, including Italy, Pakistan, Mexico, Canada and Argentina, have been strongly opposed to creating new permanent seats for fear of their expulsion. They favor increasing longer-term semi-permanent seats.

The attitude of this group and the present five permanent council members, the United States in particular, is key to the success of the council revampment.

Changes in the composition of the Security Council must be approved by two-thirds of majority in the General Assembly and ratified by the legislatures of two-thirds of the 191 UN member states, including those of five existing permanent council members.

The council was last expanded, to 15 from 11, in a 1963 General Assembly vote that took effect in 1965.

Annan will come out with his own report in March, to be drawn heavily from the panel's suggestions, and press world leaders to make decisions at the planned September 2005 summit at the United Nations.

"It is up to you, the member states, to act on their recommendations, and to make 2005 the year of change at the United Nations," Annan told the assembly on Dec. 8." It is not simply a matter of making the organization better. It is a matter of confronting, in the only way possible, the real and present dangers that lie in wait for us."

"If we do not act resolutely, and together, the threats described in the report can overwhelm us," he warned.

There is a widespread perception that the year 2005, the 60th anniversary of the United Nations' founding, offers a rare opportunity to overhaul the council, which will not arise again in years to come. If the chance is missed, the UN authority could be further eroded.

Source: Xinhua