India joined Japan on Friday in calling for more determined efforts to reform the UN as the two Asian powers pitched for permanent seats in the Security Council.
Speaking at the UN General Assembly, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh criticized scant progress made since world leaders decided three years ago to forge an “agenda for early and meaningful reform” of the world body.
“The composition of the Security Council needs to change to reflect contemporary realities of the 21st century,” he said.
“We must acknowledge frankly that there has been little progress on the core elements of the reform agenda,” Singh said.
He then called for “more determined efforts to revitalize the General Assembly to enable it to fulfill its rightful role as the principal deliberative organ of the United Nations.”
On Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso emphasized “the absolute imperative” of council reform, in his address to the assembly.
“We must bring about the early reform of the Security Council through an expansion of both the permanent and non-permanent memberships,” he said.
Aso was the first Japanese prime minister to speak at the General Assembly since 2005.
The assembly decided last week to begin inter-governmental talks on expanding the council by Feb. 28.
Japan and India joined Germany and Brazil in 2005 in a strong push to be in the council as permanent members, along with two African countries, but without veto rights.
But their bid failed after it ran into strong opposition from China and the US as well as from regional rivals such as Italy, Pakistan and Argentina.
Japan is bidding for one of the a non-permanent seats on the council next month.
The thorny issue of how to enlarge the 15-member council to make it more representative and reflective of today’s global realities has for years divided the UN membership. The council has 10 rotating, non-permanent members and five veto-wielding permanent ones (China, the US, France, Britain and Russia). Its makeup has remained largely unchanged since the UN’s establishment of the UN in 1945.
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