UNITED NATIONS, June 12: India is renewing its efforts to secure a permanent seat on the powerful UN Security Council, diplomats and UN officials told Dawn on Thursday.

India is circulating a draft resolution among the 192 members of the UN General Assembly which will in principle approve a formula for expansion of the Council without naming countries seeking permanent seats on the Security Council. It calls for extension of Article 27(3) of the UN Charter, which gives veto powers to the permanent members.

The resolution stipulates to commence inter-governmental negotiations within three weeks in order to “achieve concrete results during the current session of the General Assembly”.

India, Brazil, Germany and Japan, the aspirants for the council’s permanent membership, had dropped their demand for veto power in the course of their campaign over the past two years. They did so after realising that the existing veto-wielding members – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – would not allow dilution of their powers by the new members.

While the previous texts proposing the expansion failed to garner necessary support in the General Assembly, the new draft proposes veto power for the additional permanent members. This new element was seen as an attempt to secure the support of African countries, which insist on veto power for the two African permanent seats envisaged in the reform package.

The new Indian draft is a call for the president of the General Assembly, Srgjan Kerim, to commence inter-governmental negotiations “within three weeks of the adoption of this resolution” and to make a decision in this regard by the end of this year.

The original proposal, after protracted negotiations among member states made by former secretary-general Kofi Annan, stipulated two models – one to expand the Security Council, adding four permanent and six non-permanent seats and the second to just increase in the non-permanent seats by 10 with some seats renewable.

Smaller developing countries, under the umbrella of Uniting For Consensus, argued that increasing the number of permanent seats and giving veto powers to the new members would create new power privilege centres, instead of democratisation of the council.

The purpose of the Indian move appears to be to take the matter out of the assembly’s open-ended working group which was formed in 1994 to make recommendations on reforming the council with the widest possible support of the UN membership. By moving the exercise to the assembly, the option of calling for a vote would become available. Most diplomats say that a resort to voting would only divide the United Nations.