UNITED NATIONS, July 27: The Italian ambassador to the United Nations on Tuesday accused the four aspirants to permanent seats in the expanded UN Security Council — known as G-4 — of engaging in blackmail and financial threats to win support for their resolution. He was speaking at the UN General Assembly after Canada introduced the Uniting for Consensus (UFC) proposal, seeking to expand membership of the UNSC from 15 to 25 by adding 10 non-permanent seats.

In an unusually hard hitting speech, in support of the UFC proposal, Ambassador Marcello Spatafora accused Germany, Japan, India and Brazil, known as the Group of Four or G-4, of ‘blackmailing some sector of the membership.’ He referred to G-4 as a unit without making it clear which country or countries he meant.

“Enough is enough,” Mr Spatafora told the assembly, “I am referring to G-4 resorting to financial leverage and financial pressures … to induce a government to align or not to align itself with a certain position...” Italy has campaigned against adding new permanent members to the council.

Mr Spatafora gave an example of an unnamed G-4 donor country, which allegedly had threatened a government co- sponsoring his draft resolution, that it would ‘put an end’ to a $460,000 development project for children.

Earlier Canada formally tabled the UFC framework resolution on the expansion of the UNSC, calling it ‘the fairest and most democratic approach to the complex and controversial question of Security Council enlargement’, while seeking the broadest possible consensus on how to proceed.

Introducing the resolution, Canadian Ambassador Allan Rock said that the UFC resolution ‘would add no permanent members to the council, but rather would create new permanent seats for each region, leaving it to the members of each regional group to decide which member states should sit on those seats, and for how long.’

“This approach would permit us to achieve all of the major objectives for Security Council reform, while preserving an environment conducive to broad agreement in September, and cooperation in the years ahead,” he said.

PAKISTAN: Pakistan’s UN Ambassador Munir Akram in his address termed the UFC proposal ‘fair and equitable as it adheres to the principle of sovereign equality and will not discriminate between member states.’