Global Policy Forum

By Nicole Winfield

An effort by the United States to keep Sudan off the U.N. Security Council succeeded Tuesday as the island nation Mauritius won Africa's rotating seat on the 15-member body instead.

Ireland and Norway were the other big winners in Tuesday's secret balloting, beating out Italy for the two seats allocated for Europeans for the 2001-2002 council term. Colombia and Singapore, who both ran unopposed, also were confirmed. Those five countries will replace outgoing council members Argentina, Canada, Malaysia, Namibia and the Netherlands, whose two-year rotating stints come to a close at the end of the year.

The election capped months of behind-the-scenes campaigning by the candidate countries, and the contested races were so close that nobody was willing to predict the outcome until the votes were counted. Ireland won on the first ballot but Mauritius and Norway didn't get the required two-thirds vote until the fourth round.

Sudan had been the endorsed candidate of the Africans, but the United States mounted an intensive lobbying effort against it, arguing that a country under U.N. sanctions and accused of sponsoring terrorism had no place in the council chamber. Human rights and religious groups backed the U.S. campaign.

"I think this is a tremendous victory for reason in the U.N., and a total repudiation of Sudan," U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke said after the vote. "Mauritius is going to make a very serious and good member."

Sudanese Ambassador Elfatih Erwa said he wasn't disappointed that Sudan lost as much as he lamented the fact that Mauritius "decided to break the consensus for the service of a superpower." "We were not running against Mauritius," Erwa said. "We were running against a superpower."

The Security Council, the United Nations' top decision-making body, is made up of 15 members. Five are veto-wielding permanent members - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States. The 10 other seats go to non-permanent members, five of whom are elected to two-year terms each year.

Holbrooke said the United States had tried to persuade Sudan to drop its bid, but it refused a Sudanese offer to withdraw if Washington supported moves to lift sanctions. Sudan's insistence on maintaining its candidacy will certainly influence the U.S. decision to keep sanctions in place, he said. "The Sudanese gambled and lost both ways," Holbrooke said. "We told them that they should withdraw. And they didn't. Of course it affects the dialogue. How could it not?"

The council imposed limited diplomatic sanctions on Sudan in 1996 to compel it to hand over the gunmen who tried to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Sudan never produced the suspects, but says various inquiries didn't find them in the country. Several countries have backed Sudan's bid to lift the sanctions.