Inter-governmental negotiations among UN member states are seeing "convergence" on expanding the Security Council, a long-pending demand of countries like India, but the "key issue" of veto is likely to remain contentious during the talks to reform the world body.
Chair of the Inter-Governmental Negotiations (IGN) on Security Council Reform, Sylvie Lucas, wrote a letter to all Permanent Representatives to the UN in which she said she was "encouraged" by the "substantive contributions" made by member states in a February 22 IGN meeting on the issue of the "size of an enlarged Security Council" and its working methods.
In a February 25 letter, she said member states had a "constructive discussion" which highlighted the "main areas of convergence" on the expansion of the 15-nation Council.
"I will now be exploring with member states how best to follow up on the basis of the convergence that have emerged so far between the positions and proposals of member states both on the size of an enlarged Security Council and working methods of the Council and on the relationship between the Council and the General Assembly," she said in the letter.
The next meeting of the IGN will now be held on March 9 on the "key issue of the question of the veto."
The meeting will consider the question of the veto in the context of how it relates to the enlargement of the Council as well as to the use of the veto.
Sources, however, said that while there is convergence among member states that the UNSC should be expanded in both the permanent and non-permanent categories, the "problem" lies with the issue of veto, with US, Russia and China unlikely to budge in favour of any change in the exercise of the veto.
India's Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin had in his statement at the Informal Plenary Meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiations on February 22 said that UN member states must recognise that the case for "optimal size of the expanded Council needs to be built on contemporary realities, as well as the need to ensure that the under-represented & unrepresented regions including the developing countries of Africa, Latin America and Caribbean and the vast majority of Asia and Pacific find their due place in this long overdue expansion of the size of the Council."
He had questioned the argument that the size of an expanded Security Council in the low 20's is "compact and efficient" while the mid 20's or 27 seats result in undermining the efficiency and effectiveness of the Council.
"Is there a causal link between effectiveness and numbers... Efficiency is not merely an issue of numbers but stems from a broader set of factors such as credibility, equitability, legitimacy and representativeness," he had said.
G4 countries, Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan, have long been demanding to speed up reforms in the UN Security Council by expanding its permanent members.
