Ambassador Henrik Salander (Sweden)
December 4, 1997
Mr. President,
I have the honour to take the floor on behalf of the five Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and my own country, Sweden.
I will also make some comments based on Sweden's present experience as a member of the Security Council. This has given us a particular reason for reflection both on the role of the Council in the international system and on its internal functioning. It has reinforced our common conviction that a truly effective Security Council requires comprehensive reform.
Effectiveness means that the Council is able to agree on early and appropriate action, throughout the spectrum of conflict resolution — from early warning, fact-finding and prevention to launching new peacekeeping operations and, if need be, taking Chapter VII action.
Effectiveness also means that the decisions of the Security Council are respected and carried out. Reform should ensure that a broad range of international concerns are brought to the attention of the Security Council. It should ensure that important global and regional perspectives are included in the decision-making process of the Council and that States take responsibility for its results. It should ensure that the Security Council acts — and is seen as acting — on behalf of all Members of the United Nations.
Comprehensive Security Council reform therefore has to deal with the content of Council decisions, with its working-methods and with its size and composition.
Mr. President,
Non-permanent members are a crucial part of the Security Council membership. They ensure representativity — not only geographically, but between different experiences and view-points, between big and small, powerful and less powerful Member States. Non-permanent members can be expected, as a matter of immediate self-interest, to give priority to openness, transparency and broad consultations with non-Council members. And by having to stand for election to the Council, non-permanent members provide a particular measure of accountability. Sweden thus made a point of explaining in advance her overall political intentions as a Council member.
It is essential that a substantial number of the additional seats in an enlarged Security Council be set aside for elected non-permanent members. Elected members should also continue to constitute a clear majority in the Council.
Regional groups should be free to agree on their own rotation methods for non-permanent seats. To ensure maximum rotation, the provision whereby retiring members are not immediately re-elected should be retained. The combination of non-permanent and permanent members provides a broad representativity as well as continuity to the work of the Security Council.
The Nordic countries are therefore in favour of an increase in the number of permanent members of the Council. We share what seems to be a clear majority view: That it is important to reflect major changes in the international system also in this way. It also seems clear that there is strong support for Germany and Japan as new permanent members, together with developing country Member States from Africa, Asia and Latin America.
The members of the Security Council, permanent and non-permanent, share a global responsibility. At the same time all of them bring valuable regional knowledge and experience to the Council. Balance and interaction between these global and regional factors is a key element in the work of the Security Council. It should also be a major factor in the process of enlargement.
It should be our goal that a global decision on a Security Council enlargement — and it must be a global decision — take into account regional views as much as possible. The Harare decision of the OAU to apply a method of rotation is indeed significant. We should respect this regional position on rotation, and try to devise a way of accommodating it within an overall solution. Other regions may of course take a different approach, which should be equally respected.
We should also recognize that the international scene will continue to evolve. In the next 50 years we will in all likelihood see more rather than less change than the previous half century. This underscores the need for flexibility and a mechanism to review and revise the composition of the Security Council. The Nordic countries are strongly in favour of an agreement to carry out such a review perhaps 10 or 20 years after an enlargement. And we believe that at the review the Member States must have a real opportunity not only to discuss, but to decide and amend.
Mr. President,
The power of veto is a unique aspect of decision-making in the Security Council. Paradoxically, it both paralyzed and held together the Organization during the long period of the Cold War. But with the end of the Cold War the veto has become rare, albeit not yet extinct, in the practice of the Council.
The new international situation has created new opportunities for unity in the Security Council and for a truly co-operative approach to its decision-making. The Council has moved a considerable way in that direction. As the Security Council hopefully continues on this course gradually to curtail the use of the veto, it should also become less difficult to find a solution to the problems it poses to the negotiations on Security Council reform.
The Nordic countries would want to see concerted action to reduce the role of the veto. The permanent members should be strongly encouraged to minimize their use of the veto. They should now be able to do what the General Assembly requested already 50 years ago: To agree among themselves on limiting the number of situations in which the veto may be used, and also to agree on which issues should be defined as procedural ones. And, as a part of Charter amendments in connection with an enlargement of the Council, the possibility of a veto could perhaps be excluded from a number of specific situations.
Most countries ready to accept the responsibilities of permanent Council membership have also expressed the wish to acquire the corresponding rights, including the veto. It is a difficult task ahead to find a way of combining this aspiration with the requirements of efficient decision-making in the Security Council.
It would not be an ideal option to have a Security Council in which maybe 10 countries were endowed with veto powers as presently constituted. The Council could again become paralyzed on a number of issues. And even if that were not to occur, it could marginalize the non-permanent members of the Council.
Mr. President,
The Nordic countries have all along devoted particular attention to efforts to make the Council more open and transparent, and to encourage broad consultations with non-members, not least troop-contributing countries. These efforts have been vigorously pursued by Sweden as a member of the Security Council.
Sweden actively promoted the decision to revise the format of Security Council reports to the General Assembly. Following that decision, Sweden was, as Council President in July, the first to produce a written monthly assessment of the work of the Security Council. As Council President Sweden worked together with the Secretariat to improve the format of troop-contributors meetings. And both as President and member Sweden has tried to do its part in seeing that non-members are fully briefed on all aspects of Council work, including the informal consultations.
These and other so called Cluster 2-issues are an important and integral part of today's agenda item and of the mandate of the General Assembly Working Group. Discussions and proposals from the Working Group have very clearly influenced the last few years' tendency towards a more open Security Council. Progress has been made, but more needs to be done. The Security Council should continue to improve its practice with respect for example to regular information to non-members, open debates, the inclusion of affected non-members in its discussions, troop-contributors meetings and reporting to the General Assembly.
Openness, transparency and consultation is to a large part a matter of improving the practice and the culture of the Council. This could also be reflected in rules of procedure, provided that flexibility is left for further development. But while the means to achieve openness, transparency and consultation may vary over time, the underlying principle is surely of permanent and major importance. As such, it should merit recognition. If a revision of the Charter is undertaken, it could therefore — as the Nordic countries already proposed a few years ago — be worthwhile to include a provision, for example in Article 24, that the Security Council shall inform and consult all interested Member States on its work.
Mr. President,
We have four years of intensive deliberations behind us. This year the President of the fifty-first session of the General Assembly, Ambassador Razali, and the vice-chairmen of the Open-Ended Working Group took important and bold steps which have helped to move us forward.
Lately, great strides have been made to advance other essential aspects of UN reform. It is now imperative to finalize negotiations on the Secretary-General's reform proposal. Results in different reform areas should no doubt be mutually reinforcing. But linkages that will slow down or endanger the reform negotiations must be avoided. When the Working Group will be convened again in January next year, it must enter into a more result-oriented phase in its deliberations. In order to achieve this, the Working Group must apply flexibility to its working methods. The intensive deliberations held in the past four years should offer a good basis for more focused discussions and actual negotiations. The momentum gained in previous sessions should be utilized to its fullest extent now. We must have the courage to tackle also the difficult issues like the size of the enlarged Security Council and the question of the veto. Decisions will be difficult, but they cannot be avoided endlessly.
Negotiations on Security Council reform need to be pursued — with urgency, responsibility and flexibility. Our goal must be to find a solution which strengthens the Security Council and enjoys general agreement of Member States. Thank you, Mr. President.
