Hassan Wirajuda (pictured) urged the reform of the 15-member Security Council, saying the five permanent members wielded too much power. Reform also meant “an equitable distribution of its membership – not only in terms of geographical representation, where we already have imbalances – but also in terms of constituencies. Hence, the world’s major civilizations should be proportionately represented,” he said.

There appears to be little appetite, however, among the five permanent members of the Council, or among other states to expand the Council’s veto-wielding members, with Uruguay’s foreign minister saying his country opposed special seats on the Security Council for Muslims or any other group.

“The world’s community of 1.1 billion Muslims must be represented on the Council if it is to be truly democratic,” Wirajuda said during the annual General Debate.

“To make the Council more democratic, the application of veto power of the permanent five [members] must be regulated,” he said, referring to China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. “The misuse of the veto by any one permanent member should no longer be allowed to paralyze the entire Council.”

The world’s smaller nations should also be given a permanent seat on an expanded Security Council, the Foreign Minister of Trinidad said. Making the Security Council more representative would foster “international peace and security,” Trinidad’s Paula Gopee-Scoon said.

However, Uruguay’s Foreign Minister said his country opposed changing the composition of the Security Council, if it meant giving another country or group veto power alongside the US, UK, China, Russia and France.

Uruguay’s Gonzalo Fernández told the General Assembly the right to exercise a veto over Security Council deliberations “constitutes a privilege that goes against the democratization of our Organization.”

At the start of its September session, the General Assembly agreed to begin negotiations on the reform of the Security Council, with a target date of February 2009. Fernández said his country was disappointed by the slow pace of the negotiations, calling the “timid steps forward” taken so far inadequate.



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