United Nation: Pakistan today criticised India and other G-4 nations for seeking expansion of the UN Security Council’s permanent membership, saying proposals that promote “national aspirations” of some member states cannot enhance representative nature of the powerful organ of the world body.
Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN Maleeha Lodhi opposed the G-4 nations’ – India, Brazil, Germany and Japan – position on Security Council reform during Intergovernmental Negotiations here.
The G-4 grouping has been seeking expansion of the permanent and non-permanent seats of the Security Council to make the powerful UN body more representative and reflective of the changing global order.
The four nations support each other’s bids for permanent seats on an expanded Security Council.
Lodhi criticised the G-4 nations position, saying “without prejudice to the Common African Position for representation on behalf of an entire region, we are at a loss to understand how proposals that seek to promote the national aspirations of some member states, can enhance the representative nature of the Security Council, when the region in question, has neither bestowed that privilege on them, nor does it enjoy the right to hold them to account”.
A press release issued by Pakistan’s Permanent Mission to the UN said that the G-4 nations “have shown no flexibility” in their campaign for expanding the Security Council by 10 seats, with 6 additional permanent and four non-permanent members.
It said the Italy/Pakistan-led Uniting for Consensus (UfC) group opposed any additional permanent members.
“As a compromise, UfC has proposed a new category of members — not permanent members — with longer duration in terms and a possibility to get re-elected once,” the statement said.
Noting that representativeness and accountability were two sides of the same coin, Lodhi said the greater the accountability, the better the representativeness and that one cannot co-exist without the other.
“Applied in the context of the Security Council, it is evident that these conditions cannot be met by an expansion in the permanent category,” she said.
“This is acknowledged by UN charter itself, wherein permanent members are identified by name without creating any pretence of regional or equitable distribution,” she said.
