Mideast situation – GA general debate – Verbatim record (excerpts)

Official Records

General Assembly

Fifty-fifth session

65th plenary meeting

Thursday, 16 November 2000, 3 p.m.

New York

President:  Mr. Holkeri………………….(Finland)

The meeting was called to order at 3 p.m.

Agenda item 59 (continued)

Question of equitable representation on and increase in the membership of the Security Council and related matters

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Sir Jeremy Greenstock (United Kingdom): First, let me thank you, Mr. President, for calling a debate on this agenda item. Allow me to pay tribute to the contribution to the reform debate made by your predecessor as General Assembly President, Mr. Theo-Ben Gurirab, and his two Vice-Chairmen, Ambassadors Dahlgren and de Saram. The United Kingdom looks forward to working closely with you and your Vice-Chairmen during the coming year.

The need for Security Council reform is more pressing today than it was seven years ago, when the Open-ended Working Group was established to look at the modalities for change. When the Council was last enlarged, in 1965, the United Nations had fewer than 120 members. Today it has 189, and over 30 of those have joined in the last 10 years. It is essential that the Security Council be made more representative of this membership: the membership on whose behalf it acts and whose full confidence it needs when meeting its primary responsibility for international peace and security. It must also work in as transparent a manner as possible, allowing for extensive consultation with non-members as well as with troop contributors and with individuals or organizations with relevant expertise. It must, at the same time, retain the necessary efficiency to tackle the many and complex conflict situations on its agenda in a timely and effective manner.

We are pleased that significant progress has been made over the past year on improving the Council’s working practices. On 30 December 1999, in my capacity as President of the Council that month, I issued a note (S/1999/1291) setting out a number of points to improve procedural practice. The provisions of that note have now been put into effect. Matters concerning the Middle East, the Balkans, African States such as Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and East Timor have been the subject of briefings and debates in public meetings in the Council Chamber, with the wider membership in attendance, rather than in informal consultations of the Council. The balance between public meetings and informal consultations may still not be quite right, and there is further work to be done on matters relating to participation. But the work of the Council has now become significantly more accessible to non-members, without any diminution of its ability to take effective action.

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Mr. Kpotsra (Togo) (spoke in French):  …

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Another important area of divergence is the question of the right of veto, which is at the core of Security Council reform. The right of veto, as has been frequently emphasized, directly compromises the function of the Security Council. The need to limit this anachronistic provision is more evident than ever today, as we can see from certain recent crises, such as the renewed violence on the West Bank and in Gaza, thus deadlocking the Middle East peace process. Although proposals have been made on how to limit the exercise and scope of the right of veto, the permanent members of the Council still persist in their opposition to any limitation of this right. This is what comes out of a text of a letter (S/1999/996), dated 23 September 1999 in which the five permanent members state that any attempt to restrict or curtail their veto rights would not be conducive to the reform process.

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Mr. Heinbecker (Canada) (spoke in French): …

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A range of Council business is now being discussed in public — from Secretariat briefings to open debates to interactive discussions and special meetings with important visitors, as we had last week with Chairman Arafat of the Palestinian National Authority. This week’s Security Council calendar, which indicates that five out of seven meetings will take place publicly, is evidence of the progress made. The Council is now welcoming representatives of Member States in the Council Chamber itself, as provided for by the Charter and the Council’s provisional rules of procedure, and not, as former Argentine Permanent Representative Petrella so aptly put it, “in the dungeons” of the Conference Building.

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Mr. Samhan (United Arab Emirates) (spoke in Arabic):  …

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We also call for the allocation of a permanent seat to the Arab States on the basis of the principles of rotation and coordination within the Asian and African groups, in a manner that secures their equitable geographical representation and increases their effectiveness in contributing to regional and international peace and security.

The United Arab Emirates reiterates that it welcomes the positive measures and practices adopted by the Security Council during the past few years to improve its methods of work, in particular the holding of public meetings, which enable countries to express their political viewpoints and concerns regarding agenda items under consideration. This is especially important with respect to certain items that have been on the Council’s agenda for a long time, such as the question of Palestine and the situation in the Middle East, as well as some African problems and other issues that are the result of the double-standard policies pursued by certain countries that enjoy permanent membership in the Council — policies that have led to the situation we are witnessing today in the occupied Arab and Palestinian territories, such as the acts of genocide that the Government of Israel is perpetrating against unarmed Palestinian civilians, in complete contravention of humanitarian law and norms and relevant Security Council resolutions.

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The meeting rose at 8.25 p.m.