UNITED NATIONS, June 8: As the G-4 group — Japan, Germany India and Brazil — wavered on submitting their resolution on expanding the UN Security Council, China on Tuesday said that the five permanent members of the council do not want to rush into any decisions.
“The feelings among most of the members of the P-5 is that we are being somewhat hurried, being rushed. This is the common position. We need more time to consider,” China’s ambassador Wang Guangya told reporters.
He suggested that the alternative proposals submitted by the Uniting For Consensus group for expanding the Security Council should be considered and discussed as they had merit.
Mr Wang has clearly said that China would veto the G-4 resolution when it came for approval by five permanent members of the Council.
The G-4 proposals seek to create six new permanent seats on the Security Council while the plan submitted by the UFC group, Italy, Pakistan, Algeria, Mexico, Canada and South Korea and others, also calls for enlarging the council to 25 members but it stipulates enlarging non-permanent category with 12 seats up for re-election for longer time period than the present two years.
Mr Wang said foreign ministers from the five permanent members of the Security Council spoke by telephone last Friday and their ambassadors met again on Monday at Britain’s mission to the United Nations.
Japan’s Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura who is on a South-East Asian trip to seek support for the G-4 position on expanding the Council was quoted as saying “It doesn’t seem an easy battle. But we’re not in a position where we can easily stop our campaign.”
Mr Machimura has suggested delaying the resolution until July, but the German Ambassador at the United Nations said that they may submit the resolution on June 23.
China opposes any seat for Japan, Russia’s position is unclear and the United States favours Japan but has not spelled out any formula on how the council should be enlarged.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently indicated that she did not support a seat for Germany on the Council as Europe was already well represented by France and the United Kingdom.
