Africa scrambling for UN seats
2005-02-06 10:12
Dakar - Africa's push for seats on the UN Security Council is being watched with great interest by countries ready to trade their support for the world's poorest continent for votes to shore up their own influence.
The Japanese government has publicly made clear it will back an African bid for seats on the council. Officials from Japan have in the past few months brought long-standing development and trade co-operation to the fore.
Heads of state gathered this week in Abuja for an African Union (AU) summit to discuss options should the UN go through with a planned revamp of the world body's top decision-making organ.
Competing proposals would expand the council's membership to 24 seats, either by adding new permanent members to join Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States or by creating a third tier of nations with four-year, non-permanent but renewable seats.
Japan, Germany, Brazil and other countries whose political and economic role has greatly changed since World War II are after permanent seats and diplomats have begun talking about mutual backing regarding seats in exchange for trade.
Though the AU heads of state postponed reaching a final decision on the proposals, waiting until after a February 20-21 meeting in Swaziland of a 15-member committee, support for the first option seems to dwarf the second, with Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt the top contenders.
AU officials have said they want rotating seats on the expanded council, to be held in turn by countries in each of Africa's five regions, and insist that the permanent seats carry the same veto powers as granted to the original members of the Security Council.
Such an agreement was exactly what the German and Japanese diplomats circulating on the margins of the Abuja summit wanted to hear, hoping that it would lend strength to their own campaigns - not only for permanent seats but for veto power.
"The UN has proposed a package, that is why it is so important that Africa come to a consensus towards its participation on the Security Council," said Masaharu Kohno, the special envoy to Africa of Japanese President Junichiro Koizumi.
"If there is no consensus in Africa, no one will be able to raise that issue again, and there will be no new permanent seats. So we hope to help accelerate the AU decision-making process."
Together with India and Brazil, Germany and Japan have launched campaigns to be seated along with the "Big Five" on the Council, citing their important contributions to ensuring global security and economic stability.
At a meeting in December, German Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder and Koizumi pressed the issue, with public support for seats for Africa - which, they said then, should also be favoured with veto power.
Permanent Council members France and Russia have called for veto rights for all new members, while the United States has only explicitly backed Japan's bid without committing to giving it veto power.
Though Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade has developed strong ties with the United States, this is one area the west African leader disagrees strongly with his powerful ally.
"What is shocking is that all these new permanent members will not have the right to veto - which means there are two levels of permanent members!" he told AFP in an exclusive interview on the margins of the summit.
"We are a continent, not talking in terms of Nigeria or Sudan, and under those conditions, Africa has the right to veto power."