By James Paul
After two years of discussions with scant progress, US financial threats finally forced delegations to action. Now, the rumor-mill is in high gear and fierce lobbying is under way on the luncheon and cocktail circuit. But many delegates fear that key reform proposals could weaken the UN, narrow its purpose, lessen its financial resources and reduce its public accountability.
In the diplomatic storm-center lie negotiations over the future of the Security Council. The Council is the UN's most powerful and prestigious institution, so stakes are high and the likely impact on international policy considerable. A few major countries hope to win permanent seats in the restructured council, complete with veto power enjoyed by the present Permanent Five. But many irate delegations see permanent seats and vetoes as "anachronistic" and "undemocratic" and they back alternate proposals such as increasing only the council's elected ("non-permanent") members.
Germany and Japan, the most formidable contenders, are now making a major push for permanent seats. Since they face considerable opposition, they have abandoned their three-year campaign to obtain support by consensus. Instead, they are lining up backers and preparing to put the proposal to a vote in the General Assembly during the summer, in hopes that they can obtain the necessary two-thirds majority. As a UN Charter amendment, the arrangement requires approval by parliaments of two-thirds of member states, including all five permanent members of the Security Council.
Until very recently, a deal of this kind seemed highly unlikely. In January 1996, General Assembly President Freitas do Amaral pronounced the Germany-Japan proposal "unacceptable" to the majority of countries. But now the political climate has changed, and delegations are ready to make strategic concessions to put together a reform "package." The contenders feel it is now-or-never.
The Germany-Japan initiative faces important hurdles. Many delegations oppose any more permanent members of the Security Council on the ground that permanent membership creates arbitrary distinctions among member states and freezes them in place indefinitely. An even larger number thinks the Germany-Japan deal is unfair, since it would elevate yet another European state and make the council even more unrepresentative of the world's peoples.
General Assembly President Razali Ismail of Malaysia is pushing delegations to conclude their work, in an effort to finish negotiations in the current session which runs through the summer. A report in the leading Japanese daily Asahi Shinbun quoted him in late January as saying that he would put forward a proposal that could bring membership to Japan and Germany if negotiations failed to produce a consensus resolution.
In late January, Amb. Richard Butler of Australia convened a special consultative group to work out a Council reform plan. Though the Australian mission describes the Butler Group as "widely representative," well-informed observers note that its members include many aspirants to permanent seats -- Germany and Japan, as well as states from the global South that hope to be elevated to this exclusive club -- India, Indonesia, Brazil, Egypt and South Africa. Also participating in the group are Austria, Slovenia and Hungary (all supporters of Germany's bid), as well as a few other influentials that have expressed interest in solutions based on new permanent seats -- Malaysia, Tunisia, Norway, Chile, Kenya and Guyana.
The Butler group has met four times. But rather than hammering out a joint position, group members have clashed heatedly over the question of permanent seats for the global South. They can't agree on how such members would be chosen and whether they would have different privileges from Germany and Japan. Australian mission sources admit that the issues are "not amenable to easy solutions."
But Germany and Japan are keen to move ahead, regardless, insisting that as second and third largest dues-payers they are entitled to special treatment. They think they have the muscle and money to prevail -- with backing from Uncle Sam. According to the 15 February issue of La Stampa, a leading Italian daily, German delegate Tono Eitel revealed his plans to surprised Italian delegate, Paolo Fulci, over a mid-February breakfast. A surprised Fulci is quoted as quipping: "I don't understand this claim . . . After all, we Italians also lost World War II, just like Germany and Japan."
Italy intensely opposes a permanent seat for Germany and has often made harsh references to history in making its case. The Italian delegation pushes its own proposal, which rejects further permanent members in favor of a special class of intermediate states that would be elected periodically by the General Assembly and would rotate in and out of Security Council seats. While there's considerable interest in the "Italian Proposal," it failed to win backing from the UN's most powerful members and does not have the necessary two-thirds support to win in the General Assembly. Still, if the Germany-Japan initiative for new permanent seats collapses, the Italian Proposal might gain support as a possible compromise.
The Germany-Japan position faces opposition not only in the UN but in the domestic politics of the aspirant countries themselves. In Japan, a large sector of the public fears that a Security Council seat might draw Japan into distant conflicts and strengthen Japanese militarism. In Germany similar currents influence even mainstream politicians, and there are some hesitations within Chancellor Kohl's conservative government. On March 3, Generalanzeiger, the Bonn daily newspaper, reported that Development Minister Carl-Dieter Spranger publicly criticized Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel's strong-arm approach in the German campaign for a council seat. Spranger accused the German Mission in New York of sending the "wrong signals" on German policy and called its approach "embarassing, tasteless and ultimately counter-productive." He affirmed that the German government doesn't seek a permanent seat "at any price." Spranger's statement shows that there is no consensus in the German government for a bare-knuckle campaign. Apparently, Kinkel's tiny Liberal Party is more committed to the issue than its senior partners in Kohl's Christian Democratic Union.
With weak domestic backing, and still-strong opposition at the UN, the German-Japan initiative may well run out of steam. That might give the Italians an opening for their proposal. But it, too, could fall short of winning the necessary two-thirds support. In that case, many countries now propose simply enlarging the council by increasing the elected ("non-permanent") members. These now number ten and they might increase to fifteen. Such modest reform could broaden the membership of the council, making it more representative of the general UN membership, without touching the controversial issue of "permanent" status.
In the weeks to come, member states will negotiate intensely across the whole range of UN restructuring -- Security Council, finances, Secretariat, intergovernmental process, and more A blizzard of rhetoric about fairness, efficiency, democracy, transparency, effectiveness and other apple-pie qualities will accompany this stage of the negotiating process. It remains to be seen whether changes will ultimately improve the UN. Instead, they could subordinate it still further to the policy preferences of the few, the rich and the well-armed.
