India opposes two-tier UNSC permanent membership, agrees with G4 proposal for 15-year deferral

United Nations: While opposing a discriminatory, two-tier permanent membership level in the Security Council, India has agreed to a G4 proposal that would defer veto powers for 15 years in a reformed body.

“Expanding the permanent category with veto is critical to real reform of the Security Council”, India’s Permanent Representative P. Harish said on Tuesday.

“A new category under the framework of UNSC (Security Council) reform with or without veto would complicate an already existing discussion that involves wide-ranging views”, he said at a meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN) for Council reforms.

But he also said that India was in agreement with the position of the G4 put forward on its behalf by Brazil’s Deputy Permanent Representative Norberto Moretti for a 15-year delay before new permanent members added to the Council in a reform use their veto.

India is a member, along with Brazil, Germany and Japan, of the group known as G4 that jointly advocates for Council reform and mutually support each other for permanent seats on a reformed Council.

Moretti said, “In order to show openness and flexibility on this issue (of permanent membership), so as to foster constructive negotiations, the G4 proposes that new permanent members would not exercise the veto until a decision on the matter is reached during a 15-year review”.

Explaining the group’s offer, he said the veto issues and their impact “on the Council’s ability to act must not serve as a pretext to perpetuate its obsolete composition and to suggest proposals that would further entrench existing inequities favouring the (current) permanent members”, he said.

In their campaign against adding permanent members, some countries, notably Italy and Pakistan, have claimed that more countries wielding veto powers would further incapacitate the Council.

Increasing the number of permanent members, Moretti said, would alter the power dynamics in the Council, making it more democratic, even if the veto rights are deferred till a review after 15 years.

Harish said that the only reform of the Council in 1965, which added four non-permanent members, in fact, gave a “relative advantage” to the five veto-wielding permanent members.

It skewed the ratio of permanent members to non-permanent from 5-6 to 5-10, and reform without adding permanent members “with veto would deteriorate this ratio further and thereby perpetuate the existing imbalance and inequities,” he said.

“It’s important to limit the scope of reforms to the existing framework in order to streamline and fast-track the path to reforms”, he added.

Members of the Africa group, who are at the forefront of the reform movement to right the historic injustice to the continent that was shut out of permanent membership when the UN was formed and when most of them were under the yoke of colonialism, have demanded that new members should have veto powers.

IANS