By the time David Andrews gets back to Dublin from New York next week, he will have lobbied more than 60 foreign ministers for their vote to put Ireland on the Security Council in 2001 for a two-year term.

Ireland, which has not had a seat on the council since 1982, badly wants to return to the centre of UN decision-making, viewing it as recognition of the Irish role in UN peacekeeping over the past 40 years.

"We are not in this competition to lose," Mr Andrews said in an interview. "We have a very high reputation."

A year ago, when the lobbying campaign began, Ireland looked reasonably sure of winning one of the two temporary seats allocated to the so-called Western European and Other Group of States. The rivals were Norway and Turkey, both of which had had more turns on the council.

But the odds lengthened last March, when Italy belatedly threw its hat in the ring. The Minister and Iveagh House officials were privately furious, because for a fellow EU member-country to muscle its way into the competition at this stage was not quite cricket.

Besides, Italy has had five turns on the council, the most recent in 1995-96. Italy also has one of the most formidable operators in lobbying in its UN ambassador, Paolo Fulci, who has shown "invincibility in elections for anything", according to Jeff Laurenti of the American UN Association, a close observer of the organisation. Mr Fulci is leaving his post at the end of this year, which is causing some surprise as the voting for the Security Council seats is not until October of next year.

He may have sewn up the necessary two-thirds for election by then.

But his Irish counterpart, Richard Ryan, has also shown his lobbying skills when "dining for Ireland" at the London Embassy at a critical point in Anglo-Irish relations.

It is a secret ballot, however, so nothing is certain. According to what is known as the Fulci Formula, you get your commitments, discount the ones in writing by 20 per cent, the oral ones by 30 per cent and still make sure you have more than the necessary two-thirds, or about 120 votes.

Mr Laurenti recalls that last year the Americans were stunned when they thought they had followed the Fulci formula for winning a seat on the Budgetary Committee and "found they had been lied to by 50 per cent."

Mr Andrews is therefore cautious about how much support he has gathered for Ireland so far. "Quite a lot, frankly," he says. But he will not give figures in case it helps the competition. "We have only had a number of refusals which we appreciate as we like to know where we stand."

The "maybes", according to Mr Andrews, will come back later in writing to clarify their position on the Irish campaign.

A number of countries will never disclose their position. "We are incredibly anal on this," a British diplomat told The Irish Times. "We don't even tell a country we are voting for them. The reason is that as a Permanent Member of the Council we have to work with whoever is elected."

The US also is reluctant to show its hand when lobbied. But an Irish official says that "we feel we have a special relationship [with the US] and are not unhappy with the hints coming from that direction."

Mr Laurenti says that "the American preference, all other things being equal, is for a bigger player over a smaller player" and the US would "rather a country that won't talk back than one that might."

Mr Kenneth Allard, a UN specialist at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says that Italy, in its bid for a seat, will get "full marks" with the US and other NATO countries for "hanging tough over Kosovo" and keeping the Aviano base available even when the bombing campaign was causing big problems on the domestic front.

Mr Allard also sees Ireland as having a strong hand in the four-way contest. The "Celtic Tiger" economy is an advantage as "people tend to look to members of the Security Council to keep body and soul together." Ireland's good record on peacekeeping is also important.

Interestingly, Mr Allard also sees Ireland's role in the Belfast Agreement in Northern Ireland as a good card to play in the campaign.

Mr Andrews says he is finding the Gulf States and African countries "very, very positive". Ireland's presence for the first time as an observer at the Organisation for African Unity meeting in Algiers last July proved invaluable in getting access to many African states where there is no Irish ambassador.

The Minister also used his attendance at a landmines conference in Mozambique in May and at a Caribbean conference earlier in the year to press the Irish case. The vote of a tiny country is just as important in a secret ballot as that of countries such as India and China with populations of a billion or more, he points out.

In his speech to the General Assembly, the Minister will also be laying out Ireland's credentials to qualify as a good member of the Security Council, where only the five Permanent Members have the veto power. Mr Andrews will express support for enlargement of the 15-member council to give African, Asian and Latin American countries better representation so this will go down well with them.

The results of all the lobbying by the Minister and ambassadors are being fed into a computer in the special unit set up in Iveagh House under Ambassador Mary Whelan to co-ordinate the campaign.

Here the "rock-solids", the "maybes" and the "OKs" are cross-referenced and double-checked.

The Fulci Formula must not be forgotten.