UNITED NATIONS April 9: Over 100 delegations to the United Nations General Assembly will attend a meeting dubbed as “Uniting for Consensus” organized by like-minded states led by Pakistan and Italy on Monday.

Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs Gianfranco Fini will host a luncheon followed by the meeting at a local hotel in New York.

The meeting, which has gained tremendous momentum after China, and the United States, called for consensus on the UN Security Council reform despite UN Secretary General Kofi Anna’s warning that reform should be adopted as a whole, saying that it is not “a la carte” option.

The G-4 countries Japan, Germany, India and Brazil, held a meeting of their own last week where they asked the UN members to vote for UN Security Council by majority two-third votes. They had expressed confidence that they had enough votes to pass the measure.

The four countries put forward the proposal in a joint statement, which was read out by German Ambassador to the UN Gunter Pleuger who said in a statement that a failure to reach consensus should not become an excuse for postponing Security Council reforms.

But all that changed rapidly after China’ Ambassador Wang Guangya asserted that any reform of the Security Council should be adopted by “consensus” without any time line.

In a statement on the eve of the meeting the like-minded countries said they shared the conviction that the United Nations must be enabled to deal effectively with the challenges of the 21st Century.

To that end, effective multi-lateralism must be enhanced and the United Nations must be reformed preserving the institutional balance of the main bodies of the organization.