January 2, 2003
With the start of 2003, the powerful and prestigious UN Security Council takes on five new members on Wednesday and bids adieu to another five who are wrapping up two-year terms on the 15-nation body. With disarmament of Iraq at the top of the council's agenda, Germany, Spain, Pakistan, Chile and Angola take rotating two-year seats on the council just after midnight on Tuesday.
They join the council's five permanent members -- the United States, France, Russia, Britain and China -- and five other nations with one year remaining of their two-year terms -- Bulgaria, Cameroon, Guinea, Mexico and Syria. The five newest members were elected by a vote of the 191-nation UN General Assembly in September. They fill seats vacated at midnight by Colombia, Ireland, Mauritius, Norway and Singapore. Under the UN Charter, the Security Council has primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security.
Its resolutions can be binding under international law, and it has the power to decide war and peace issues and impose sanctions such as arms embargoes and economic restraints. Representatives of each of the council's 15 member-nations are required to be constantly on standby at UN headquarters in New York in case of a crisis somewhere in the world.
The five new members elected each year are initially nominated by regional groups. The General Assembly rarely challenges the slate if there are no rival candidates, as was the case this year. France takes presidency in January. The council is run from day to day by a presidency which rotates monthly. France assumes the post for January, to be followed by Germany in February and Guinea in March.
The council's agenda for January is expected to be dominated by Iraqi arms inspections as U.S. President George W. Bush carries on preparations for a possible war on Baghdad. A Nov. 8 council resolution gave Iraq a final chance to rid itself of weapons of mass destruction or face "serious consequences," and UN inspectors are to present the council with their first substantive report on their findings by Jan. 27.
The inspections resumed on Nov. 27 after a four-year hiatus and Baghdad says it has no banned chemical, biological or nuclear arms. But Bush says he has evidence to the contrary and has threatened to disarm Iraq by force if it does not come clean.
Washington has already declared Baghdad in material breach of the Nov. 8 resolution, saying Iraq's declaration of its weapons programs, presented to the council earlier this month, was incomplete. The council decided earlier this month to name Germany to chair its sanctions panel on Iraq in 2003-04 after the White House dropped its opposition to the move.
The United States had initially opposed Germany's bid to chair the panel because it feared Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's government, which campaigned against an attack on Iraq, might challenge U.S. policy. The committee monitors enforcement and compliance of sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of neighboring Kuwait.
Chile, Washington's original choice for the Iraq panel, will take over the Afghanistan sanctions committee that compiles lists of people and organizations suspected of association with Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network and remnants of the country's former Taleban rulers. Spain was given the chairmanship of the council's counter-terrorism committee, also a high-profile post, when British UN Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock retires in mid-2003. This panel, set up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the United States, monitors reports from all UN members on what they are doing to combat terrorism.
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