Discussions on expanding membership of the United Nations Security Council should not eclipse the need for pursuing more general UN reforms, deputy foreign minister Aziz Pahad said on Tuesday.
”We must deal with the Security Council issue in the context of the totality of the changes that have to be made to the entire UN system,” he told reporters in Pretoria.
Pahad was speaking after hosting his Mexican counterpart, Maria de Lourdes Aranda Bezaury, for bilateral political and economic discussions.
Mexico does not support the proposed expansion of permanent membership of the Security Council. Africa is asking for two permanent and five non-permanent seats.
Bezaury explained that Mexico was in favour of UN reform and will welcome new council members, but not permanent ones.
The time has arrived, she said, for a serious discussion on how the UN worked.
”There is much interest and much agreement in most of our countries on what we should do. But we are not doing it because we are discussing high politics of who is going to be or not going to be on the Security Council.
”We hope we can move forward as soon as possible and finish with the discussion on the Security Council and then go on working for the Millennium Summit, which is fundamental for developing countries.”
The summit, to be held in New York in September, is to review progress made with UN goals agreed upon in 2000 for global poverty reduction and development.
Bezaury said the UN should pay more attention to developmental issues and concentrate less on the security concerns of developed countries.
Mexico is among a group of countries calling itself United for Consensus, who believed that a decision on the expansion of the Security Council should be based on consensus, not a vote.
”We want a United Nations, not a divided nations.”
The group believes the Security Council should be democratic, and all member countries should have the same rights — with none enjoying veto power.
”We want more countries from the developing world to be represented, to be able to raise more issues of concern for all countries.”
The Security Council should consist of 25 members at most, 10 more than now, with elections every four years. This would boost the council’s accountability, Bezaury said.
”The permanent members who are there now are not accountable except to themselves or maybe their constituencies. If you have to be re-elected as a member, you will take into account the opinions of all other countries. It will make for a more democratic Security Council.”
Bezaury said the group understood Africa’s position on the matter, and agreed the continent should have larger representation.
”But as a matter of principle, Mexico is against having more permanent members. From the beginning, that is what has been wrong with the Security Council and we don’t understand why should we make this way of working even larger.”
Pahad said South Africa agreed with Mexico’s position that reform was required for the UN and its institutions to better deal with ”fundamental” issues like peace, human rights, terrorism and the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
UN reform was one of the issues discussed by the so-called G5 group of countries — South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, India and China — on the fringes of last week’s meeting in Scotland of the Group of Eight (G8) developed nations.
While there appeared to be disagreement on the success of the G8 meeting, Pahad said it had delivered better than expected results for the African development agenda.
”Maybe it’s not sufficient to deal with the major problems we face, but it is much more than could have been expected.” – Sapa