By Colum Lynch

China's U.N. ambassador on Monday challenged Secretary General Kofi Annan's proposal to enlarge the Security Council to 24 members by year's end, dealing a setback to the second major effort in a decade to expand the powerful 15-nation body.

China's top U.N. envoy, Wang Guangya, said more time is needed to reach agreement on the politically sensitive issue. Wang also insisted it is "essential" that an agreement on enlarging the council be reached by a unanimous vote in the 191-member General Assembly, a standard that would permit a single U.N. member to undercut any rival's candidacy. In his March 20 report proposing changes at the United Nations, Annan urged the members to finish negotiations on expanding the council before a U.N. summit in September. He said that although it would be "very preferable to take this vital decision by consensus," failure to obtain unanimous support for the initiative "must not become an excuse for postponing action."

While Wang insisted that China favors an expanded council, as long as most of the new members come from the Third World, his procedural demands threaten to stall momentum for broader council membership, diplomats said. "I think you can conclude that [the proposal] is dead," a Security Council ambassador said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he did not want to offend China. "This is clearly an execution."

Wang stopped short of publicly opposing Japan's candidacy for the council. But his remark came as opposition to Tokyo's prospects was mounting in South Korea and China, where demonstrators vandalized Japanese businesses in the southern and southwestern cities of Shenzhen and Chengdu over the weekend to protest its bid for a permanent seat.

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