September 15, 2004
Germany, Brazil, Japan and India will announce next week in New York that they plan to back each other's bids for permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council, a German newspaper reported Wednesday. The prominent weekly Die Zeit cited German government sources as saying Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of Germany would make the announcement Tuesday at the UN. A German foreign ministry spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.
Die Zeit said that Fischer had laid the groundwork in recent weeks by dispatching German ambassadors to the foreign ministries of their host countries. It added that the ambassadors had each been accompanied by their counterparts from close ally France, which along with Britain, China, Russia and the United States holds a veto-wielding permanent seat on the Security Council.
Germany, which currently occupies one of 10 rotating berths on the Council, has been campaigning for years to be included in any expansion of the body. The move would mark the first time that Berlin made its bid official, as part of a reform drive launched by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to make the body, founded after World War II, more representative.
Fischer has stepped up the campaign in recent months and on a visit to New Dehli in July, he and Singh announced Germany and India's intention to support each other's ambitions at the Security Council. And last week, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told Germany's Handelsblatt newspaper that his country and Germany had made a similar agreement.
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