Germany, India and South Africa take their places this week on the UN Security Council, giving it the look of a body that many see as the basis of a reformed custodian of world peace.
As Brazil has one more year on the council, many diplomats are looking at the next 12 months to see how the world’s increasingly assertive new players and old powers can work together on trouble-spots ranging from Sudan to Iran’s nuclear drive.
The permanent five — Britain, China, France, Russia and the US — who can veto any resolution, have dominated the council since 1945.
There has been no change since 1963 when the number of non--permanent members increased from six to 10.
With Ivory Coast and the Korean Peninsula in crisis, a referendum in Sudan next week that could breakup Africa’s biggest nation and Palestinians stepping up demands for nationhood, Germany, India, South Africa, along with fellow new members Portugal and Colombia, will have their diplomatic mettle tested within days.
The Western powers are looking for signs of the intentions of the pretenders for permanent seats, particularly India and South Africa.
“There are some fears that work could be blocked,” said one envoy, speaking on condition of anonymity.
With one eye on a tentative new campaign to change the council, all have been making conciliatory noises as they start their two-year stay.
South Africa, Brazil and India have in the past been reluctant to impose sanctions on nations such as Iran.
However, South Africa’s UN ambassador, Baso Sangqu, said that none of the new powers wanted a “gridlocked” Security Council.
“All of us will be raising voices on issues that are important to us and we hope that this will have a collective impact in terms of how the council responds, but there won’t be a them and us kind of configuration,” he told reporters.
India is still celebrating the support given by US President Barack Obama for its drive to become a permanent council member.
India’s ambassador, Hardeep Singh Puri, said the new and old nations would be “on the same page in terms of overall objectives. If there are perceptions of nuance you will find them all very constructive.”
India has traditionally opposed human rights UN resolutions against individual nations, but has changed this recently for North Korea and most notably Iran.
“We are constantly reviewing our positions. This is a new -India,” the ambassador said in an interview.
“We want our tenure to create an added value for the broad membership and if countries feel that this council did a good job, it would certainly lend the discussion about Security Council reform further impetus,” German envoy Peter Wittig said.
South Africa wants “to advance the African agenda within the Security Council,” Sangqu said.
More than two thirds of the conflicts and crises that the Security Council handles are in Africa.
“It is not something that we should be proud of,” he said.
The Sudan referendum on Jan. 9 will be one of the first tests and Sangqu said the international community must put resources into the reconstruction of both north and south Sudan after the vote in the south. South Africa also wants greater international resources for Somalia, which the ambassador said should not become “a forgotten conflict,” a fate which he said had already befallen Western Sahara.
“The council is not doing anything” over the dispute between Morocco and Western Sahara guerrillas, he said.
Puri said India would put forward a very “strong voice” on terrorism and on peacekeeping. India is the biggest troop contributor to UN peacekeeping forces.
He said the Security Council 15 have to take the rest of the UN more seriously.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
RSS