Global Policy Forum

Australian Prime Minister John Howard will propose to the United Nations next week that the UN Security Council be revamped to include a permanent seat for the world's largest Islamic nation, Indonesia. Under the plan, outlined in recent interviews, Howard sees the council becoming a three-tiered body, replacing the existing two-tiered system, which has five permanent members and 10 two-year rotational seats.

Indonesia, India, Japan, Germany and Brazil would form the second tier with permanent seats but no rights of veto, unlike the existing permanent members, Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States. The final five places making up the third tier would continue to be elected and rotated every year or two. Howard leaves on Thursday for the United States where he and his wife Janette will be guests of President George W. Bush at his Texas ranch before flying on to New York for talks with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Sunday. Howard is expected to seek Bush's support for a plan he thinks may help restore the relevance of the UN after it failed to act decisively over Iraq and emerged from the conflict with questions hanging over its future.

Bush has persistently called for reform of the Security Council. Howard has made clear he believes his plan would reshape the Council as a far better expression of world opinion, giving voice to a greater cross-section of international and cultural interests and concerns. The five new permanent members he proposes would give representation not only to the Islamic world, but to Latin America and to the other economic powerhouses of Europe and Asia. An enthusiastic member of the US-led "coalition of the willing" in Iraq, Howard told The Bulletin magazine the United Nations had been weakened over Iraq.

"But I don't think it's terminal," he told the magazine. "There may be a greater momentum towards some kind of reform of the Security Council. "I see merit in a Security Council that has three layers, the five permanent veto members -- none of them are going to give it up -- with five permanent non-veto members, then five that keep changing every year. "The five permanent non-veto members would be, say, Japan, India, Brazil, Germany and Indonesia, an Islamic country." He said he intended to pursue it, believing the Security Council is in urgent need of reform, while conceding that getting it is another matter.

However, he may have an ally in Kofi Annan who has also frequently declared his support for reform, nominating it as his principal second-term objective when he was reinstated as secretary-general 15 months ago. Bush warned before he launched the Iraq war that he would push to revamp the UN if the Security Council failed to approve a resolution paving the way for war on Iraq. It failed to do so. "We hope tomorrow the UN will do its job. If not, all of us need to step back and try to figure out how to make the UN work better, as we head into the 21st century," Bush said after a crisis meeting with prime ministers Tony Blair of Britain and Jose Maria Aznar of Spain in mid-March.

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