by Farhan Haq
InterPress Service
United Nations, November 21 - The chances of expanding the 15-
nation Security Council by adding Germany, Japan and three
developing countries as new permanent members have decreased in
recent weeks, amid procedural wrangling and regional division.
With only one month to go before the 185-nation General
Assembly wraps up its current session, both supporters and critics
of Security Council expansion admit there is little immediate hope
for a vote to admit new members.
Ambassador Tono Eitel of Germany, which has been one of some 20 countries seeking a 'framework resolution' that would broadly approve the Council's expansion, acknowledged at a roundtable discussion sponsored by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation that no such draft resolution was ready for an Assembly vote yet. ''We have not been able to get our act together,'' Eitel said.
The pro-expansion group's has been trying to secure support for the addition of five new permanent members - Germany, Japan and one representative each from Asia, Africa and Latin America - in an expanded, possibly 24-nation Council. ''Security Council reform, like U.N. reform, is extremely difficult,'' Eitel conceded. ''I give it a 50 percent chance in the foreseeable future.''
Opponents of Council expansion give its prospects even lower odds. ''I think there is no possibility whatsoever, as things currently stand, for new permanent members in the Security Council,'' argued Ambassador Francesco Paolo Fulci of Italy, one of the 23 co-sponsors of a draft resolution which asks the Assembly to defer the expansion question until next session.
Most of the U.N. member states, Fulci said, could not agree on new permanent seats, because of regional rivalries over which countries would be accepted to join the club -- which now comprises Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States. ''Do you ever imagine for a moment that Pakistan or Indonesia would accept India as a permanent member? Or Argentina or Mexico accepting Brazil as a permanent member?'' he asked.
The 23 co-sponsors of the draft resolution delaying action on Council expansion in fact include many nations which would see the ascension of their regional rivals in the likeliest expansion plans. Among the co-sponsors are Pakistan, Indonesia, Argentina and Mexico; as well as South Korea, which has been critical of Japan's plans for a permanent seat; Italy, which has similarly opposed German inclusion; and other regional powers, like Egypt and Turkey, which are unlikely to win any permanent seats.
Fulci said that the anti-expansion bloc would not push for a vote on their resolution as long as the pro-expansion bloc does not seek a vote on any framework resolution. But if there is any attempt to obtain approval for Council expansion in the Assembly, the Italian envoy added, the resolution to delay action would still be available. ''There will be no coup,'' he said.
Part of what is at stake in all the procedural haggling is how many votes are needed to approve new permanent members of the Council. Fulci and many expansion critics believe that, for such a crucial change in the U.N. Charter, any motions must be approved by two-thirds of all members -- a minimum of 124 votes. Eitel and other expansion supporters argue that, as in previous practise, only two-thirds of all voting members are needed to approve the new members. That could amount to significantly fewer nations if many delegations abstain out of fear of offending powerful Council hopefuls like Bonn and Tokyo.
Council expansion has been adrift for some time now. Ambassador Daudi Mwakawago of Tanzania, the chairman of the 'Group of 77' developing nations' coalition, said that, although the chances for Council expansion are ''anybody's guess ... I just don't see it on the horizon.'' Africa, Mwakawago said, is large enough as a bloc in the United Nations that it deserves two permanent seats -- a prospect which Eitel said will be difficult to achieve.
Meanwhile, there is no clear answer about whether new permanent members would have the same veto powers as the current five. Eitel said that, although incoming members do not want to be discriminated against, there is little chance that they could immediately acquire veto power. (The Council currently also boasts 10 non-permanent members, which sit for two-year terms and have no veto.)
Other delegations have simply grown weary of the now four-year- old debate on Council expansion. ''The saw of divisions is cutting us once again through the poor for the benefit of the big industrialised countries,'' Cuban Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina argued here recently. ''Let us come to an agreement for once and for all.''
Council reform could be delayed by external political factors, however - including the failure by one of its major backers, the United States, to repay some 1.5 billion dollars in U.N. arrears. The U.S. plan to add five new permanent members, while expanding the entire Council to no more than 21 seats in all, is just one of many reform plans overshadowed by the U.N. arrears crisis prompted by the U.S. nonpayment.
Following the rejection by the U.S. Congress last week of a plan developed by the White House to pay back at least 850 million dollars of the arrears, the European Union (EU) this week deplored Washington's lack of repayment. The lack of action on arrears by the United States ''seriously affects the climate of trust within the organisation,'' the EU said in a statement from Brussels.
''I don't think this decision is going to facilitate negotiations or actions here,'' U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said of last week's failure by Congress to include the arrears payment in its foreign aid appropriation.
