UNITED NATIONS, New York:The UN General Assembly has opened the door to expanding the Security Council by calling for full-scale negotiations on adding new members to the institution's most powerful body.
After hours of talks on Monday the assembly unanimously passed a resolution approving "inter-governmental negotiations" on expanding the council to begin by February 2009.
Several UN diplomats described the breakthrough as "historic", saying it greatly increased the likelihood that the council will become larger and more representative of the world today.
The process of expanding the council began in 1993 when a UN working group was given the task of drawing up a plan for enlarging the 15-nation body. However, the committee worked on the basis of consensus which it could never achieve due to disagreements among key members.
Even if the inter-governmental negotiations strike a deal on enlarging the council, which has the power to authorise sanctions, trade embargoes and military action, the process of ratification by UN member states will probably take years and there is no guarantee it will succeed.
However, diplomats said moving the discussion out of the deadlocked committee early next year and putting it into the hands of the 192 UN member-states will capitalise on the widely-held view that an enlargement is overdue.
UN diplomats said that it would not be difficult to get the support of two-thirds of the UN member states needed for approval, provided they can agree on how many seats to add.
One recent proposal which UN diplomats said enjoyed broad support among member states called for adding about seven new members to the council.
Japan's UN ambassador Yukio Takasu called the assembly's decision "historic". Japan is one of the candidates for a permanent seat on an expanded council, along with Germany, India, Brazil and an undetermined African nation.
The council now has five permanent veto-wielding members - Britain, China, France, Russia and the US. Ten nonpermanent members are elected for two-year terms on a regional basis.
The size of the council has increased once since the UN was created in 1945. In 1965, the number of elected members rose from six to 10.
The main reason for the slow progress in the working group, established in 1993, was that regional rivalries created an impasse that was difficult to break.
Diplomats said the outgoing president of the General Assembly, ambassador Srgjan Kerim of Macedonia, played a key role in convincing the working group that the time had come to let go of the issue and allow governments to take over.
- (Reuters)