Foreign Desk Report
NEW YORK: Pakistan has warned that attempts by the aspirants of permanent seats on the UN Security Council (UNSC) to railroad efforts to reform the 15-member body would kill the consensus-based process to make it more effective, representative and accountable.
“More permanent members will compound the Council’s inequality and dysfunctionality,” Islamabad’s permanent representative in UN Ambassador Munir Akram said while reaffirming the government’s strong opposition to including new permanent members. “Pakistan is opposed to expansion in the permanent category along with veto,” he said.
“Permanent membership contradicts the fundamental precepts of sovereign equality, democracy, representativeness and accountability,” the envoy said, adding: “It is only through an expansion in the non-permanent category that the ideal of a comprehensive reform can be met.”
With that in view, Ambassador Akram said that the Italy and Pakistan-led Uniting for Consensus (UfC) group, which opposes adding any permanent members, has proposed 11 new elected members to the Council.
Full-scale negotiations to reform the Security Council began in the General Assembly in February 2009 on five key areas the membership categories, the question of veto, regional representation, size of an enlarged Security Council.
