At the United Nations, Pakistan has opposed the addition of new permanent members to the UN Security Council saying it will compound the Council’s inequality and dysfunctionality.
Addressing a meeting of Inter-Governmental Negotiations Framework, Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Ambassador Munir Akram reiterated Pakistan’s principled stance on restructuring the Security Council by expansion in the non-permanent category so that the ideal of a comprehensive reform can be met.
Munir Akram said progress in the reform process can be made only through consultations, mutual accommodation, and innovative compromise not by bullying and coercion.
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The Pakistani envoy warned against attempts by the aspirants of the Council’s permanent membership to try and railroad the process of reform, which, he said, must be agreed upon through negotiations.
Permanent membership contradicts the fundamental precepts of sovereign equality, democracy, representativeness, and accountability, the Pakistani envoy said, adding, it is only through an expansion in the non-permanent category that the ideal of a comprehensive reform can be met, he stressed.
Last month, Pakistan had warned that attempts by the aspirants of permanent seats on the UN Security Council — India, Brazil, Germany, and Japan, known as G-4 — to railroad efforts to reform the 15-member body would kill the consensus-based process to make it more effective, representative and accountable.
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“The Inter-Governmental Negotiations (IGN) remains the only credible platform for a comprehensive reform of the Security Council,” Ambassador Munir Akram said while re-affirming that Pakistan’s strong opposition to creating new permanent members.
“Any attempts to undermine or derail the IGN process will prove counterproductive,” the Pakistani envoy said when the long-running IGN process resumed in New York.
Having failed to evoke support for their bid for permanent membership of the Council, he said that the G-4 members were trying to create the ‘fear’ that the opportunity for reform may soon be lost unless their procedural moves to short circuit the process were endorsed.
“We are prepared to breathe new life in the IGN but some states are bent upon killing the process,” Ambassador Akram said.
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Full-scale negotiations to reform the Security Council began in the General Assembly in February 2009 on five key areas the categories of membership, the question of veto, regional representation, size of an enlarged Security Council, and working methods of the council and its relationship with the General Assembly.
Despite a general agreement on enlarging the Council, as part of the UN reform process, member states remain sharply divided over the details.
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