Mr. Chairman,
To better understand the issue that the Chair has decided to propose for today's debate, the increase in permanent members, allow me to briefly summarize the main stages of our exercise for the reform of the Security Council.
Initially, some countries proposed and supported a formula consisting in assigning permanent seats only to two rich, industrialized countries from the northern hemisphere with the promise of extending similar privilege also to developing countries in a second stage. This is why it was called the "quick fix" formula. Some countries even seemed to think that this was the main goal of the whole exercise. However, the debate quickly showed that the "quick fix" wouldn't float. From the outset, it had no chance of passing since it would have further aggravated the current imbalance in the Council, and widened the considerable distance between northern hemisphere industrialized countries, which already hold the 5 current permanent seats, and emerging countries, which hold none. We must give credit to the distinguished permanent representative of Germany, Ambassador Tono Eitel, for recognizing, and I quote him, that "the so-called 'quick fix' solution will never work. And quite rightly so: it would definitively lack the necessary support of the membership. The legend of "quick fix" does not reflect reality."
Having put a tombstone over the "quick fix" (or so we hoped), the "2 + 3" proposal was advanced. It consisted in assigning two permanent seats to Germany and Japan, and three permanent seats to one country each from the three continents under-represented in the Council (Asia, Africa and Latin America). However, this formula did not fly either, for the following reasons:
a) because the three continents cannot agree on who to choose for the new permanent seats. The countries that have nominated themselves have failed to obtain enough support.
Let us also recall that the 5 current permanent members were selected as a result of World War II. But mid-way through the 1990's, fortunately for mankind, no one has won another global war. Thus it is not easy to impose solutions that would create new situations of irreversible, eternal power and privilege, in a historic moment characterized instead by wide-spread hopes for greater democracy in international relations. In this regard, allow me to quote the words spoken by our Secretary General, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, at a conference in Seoul on April 1, 1996, concerning the reform of the Security Council: "Participation, legitimization and democratization will be keys to the common progress of the international community of states as we move into the next century. All three can be served by Security Council reform."
b) The second reason the "2 + 3" did not fly is that one of the current permanent members does not seem willing to consider extending the status of permanent membership to countries other than Germany and Japan. Furthermore, only one permanent member has pronounced itself in favor of the "2 + 3" formula. The others have not yet expressed their positions in this regard. We understand that some of them are looking more deeply into the implications of such a solution.
I wish to recall the enormous power that the five current permanent members also have in this context: Any one of them can block the entire reform process. In fact, Article 108 of the Charter declares that any Amendments to the Charter require a vote of two-thirds of the members of the General Assembly, as well as ratification at the national level by two-thirds of the member states, including all 5 permanent members. Thus we are faced by a veto power that in this particular case extends beyond the Security Council, to which the veto is generally thought to be limited.
c) The third reason we see no future in the "2 + 3" formula is the "cascade effect" so aptly described by the distinguished permanent representative of Argentina, Ambassador Emilio Cardenas. This refers to the "fringe benefits" enjoyed by permanent members in terms of the privileged positions they come to hold in other UN bodies. An increase of 5 permanent seats (openly aspiring to equal status with the current permanent members) would risk paralyzing the United Nations, seriously compromising any prospects of equitable rotation and true renewal.
Mr. Chairman,
Since neither the "quick fix" nor the "2 + 3" formula show any signs of passing, a semantic expedient was recently found that many immediately termed the "quick fix by the back door." This new formula would assign two authentic permanent seats to Germany and Japan, and three phony ones, i.e., the so-called "regional permanent rotating seats" to Asia, Africa and Latin America. A small squadron of delegations have thus far declared their support for this expedient: Norway, Tunisia, Malaysia and Zimbabwe seem to be at the forefront. But this is a far cry from a two-thirds majority, also because other delegations (in addition to Italy, Spain, Brazil, Malta, India and Indonesia) have expressly criticized or taken their distance from this formula, which we call the "quick fix" in disguise.
Allow me to spell out the grounds for our reservations:
1. This proposal is a logical contradiction that would have Aristotle and Descartes turning over in their graves. Its proponents have defined it as "a constructive ambiguity." But let's call a spade a spade. All we can see in it is ambiguity, pure and simple, and nothing constructive. It looks more like a Trojan horse with the quick fix hidden in its belly. I believe that this time around, the Trojans will not be duped.
2. As our Brazilian colleague rightly observed in the recent informal consultations organized by the bureau in one of their chanceries, our organization is the "United Nations," not the "united regions." Assigning prerogatives and competences to regional groups that the UN charter reserves to the General Assembly, as the expression of the general membership, would entail an institutional subversion far beyond modest Amendments to a few articles in the Charter - the logic within which the exercise has thus far remained. Another great ambiguity is how the rotation of these so-called permanent seats should apply within each geographic group: all the members or only a few of them?
3. Why should the principle of regional rotation only be applied to three geographic groups, leaving out the others? Are some regions more equal than others? We are firmly opposed to any singularization, any discrimination between geographic groups, any marginalization of many or some of them from the benefits of reform. The result of marginalization, as was very recently stated in the General Assembly, would be an Olympus of powerful countries that would widen the gap and thus reduce the interest of the excluded, demeaning their political commitment in the process. It would be the beginning of the end, not unlike what happened in the League of Nations, to give some countries the dangerous feeling that they are token presences, mere spectators.
4. One major gray area of the quick fix in disguise remains the veto. Its supporters would assign to the "regional permanent rotating seats." These countries maintain - and very rightly so - that without the veto there would be no substantial difference between these seats and the current non-permanent seats. Should the veto be granted to the permanent rotating members, it would start to circulate in the three continents in question like a sort of blank check, without knowing its specific beneficiaries.
5. Finally, with regard to our geographic group, we continue to hope that one day Europe may speak with a single voice, both in the Security Council and in other contexts. This is a long-term objective that two ministers of foreign affairs of Italy openly advocated in their addresses to the General Assembly, in 1990 and 1992. It also appears in Italy's written reply of June 30, 1993 to the Secretary General's questionnaire on the reform of the Security Council. Therefore we are surprised at the comment recently expressed by some of our European partners over a position of principle that Italy has defended long and consistently, and that would be hard to reconcile with assigning a permanent seat to a third member country of the European Union.
Mr. Chairman,
In the meantime, the Italian proposal for reform continues to gather consensus. To date, since the beginning of this exercise it has garnered 58 shows of support: By these I mean both open expressions of full support or interest in its major elements and potential as a "fall-back solution" in the likely event that an agreement on an increase in permanent seats proves impossible. And in our view, this is exactly what is happening. We see a decline in support for expanding the island of boundless power and privilege inhabited by the current 5 permanent members. We are confident that instead support will slowly grow around our proposal, a proposal that provides equitable rotation for every geographic group, to the advantage of all, and not of the few.
These remain the guiding principles of our action, in an exercise that should take place here, at the United Nations, in the light of day, without any attempts at manipulation or manoeuvres behind the scenes.
This, Mr. President, responds to all the points in issue number 1 of the new programme of work, dedicated to permanent membership. We are and we remain strongly opposed to any hypothesis of an increase in permanent membership, as we are to any semantic games such as "rotational arrangements for new permanent members."
During this exercise, some have implied that the Italian delegation was defending the "status quo." Nothing could be further from the truth. We are against the status quo. We are strongly committed to the renewal of the United Nations. From the beginning we have repeated that the Security Council should reflect the growth of the UN since the last and only enlargement of 1965. We are firmly committed to an increase in non-permanent members only, to equality, truly equitable representation, transparency and better coordination between the Security Council and the General Assembly. What we are strongly opposed to is elitism, marginalization, singularization, exclusion, and any increase in power and privilege, in open disregard for democracy.
