While reaffirming support for a permanent seat for India, the US is calling for text-based negotiations for reform of the UN Security Council giving an impetus to the stalled process, according to Permanent Representative Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
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- While reaffirming support for a permanent seat for India, the US is calling for text-based negotiations for reform of the UN Security Council giving an impetus to the stalled process, according to Permanent Representative Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
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- U.N. was founded in 1945, the Security Council had 11 members. This increased in 1965 to 15 members, made up of 10 elected states serving two-year terms and five permanent veto-wielding nations: Russia, China, France, the U.S., and Britain.
- She reaffirmed the US position backing permanent Council seats for India, Japan, and Germany. Council reform process known as Inter-Governmental Negotiations (IGN) has been effectively blocked by a small group of countries that oppose the adoption of a negotiating text.
- India and several countries have been pushing for the adoption of the negotiating text and the the US adding its weight gives it added impetus. Thomas-Greenfield’s announcement, “we will help jump-start this process in a number of ways by calling for text-based negotiations at the earliest possible opportunities”.
- The focus of her speech at the Council on Foreign Relations was on giving two permanent seats to Africa, the continent of 1.5 billion people spread across 55 countries and where about half the Council-mandated peacekeeping operations are located.
- “It’s what our African partners seek, and we believe, this is what it’s what is just,” she said. “There are currently three non-permanent seats on the Security Council allocated to African countries on a rotating basis, for two years,” she said.
- “The problem is, these elected seats don’t enable African countries to deliver the full benefit of their knowledge and voices to the work of the Council.”
- African nations have demanded two permanent seats on the Council and the addition of two elected seats.
- Their demand is now resonating at the UN with added intensity as it looks to the 80th anniversary of its founding next year. US also backs a permanent seat for Latin America and the Caribbean, she said, but did not endorse Brazil, which has also staked a claim.
- The group blocking the adoption of a negotiating text is the 12-member Uniting for Consensus (UfC) led by Italy and includes Pakistan which opposes the addition of permanent members.
- UfC maintains that there should be a consensus before there can be negotiating text, locking the process in a Catch-22 situation because without negotiations that require a text, there can’t be a consensus.
