NEWS: Annan Pushes Changes to UN Security Council

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan is promoting sweeping changes to the Security Council, the most powerful arm of the UN. The proposals include expanding the council from 15 to 24 members, some of whom would be permanent members but without the veto power the current permanent members U.S., UK, France, Russia and China have. The plan comes in the wake of several scandals that have rocked the UN.



Security Council members have traditionally had to meet the requirements of being ready and able to participate in peacekeeping military actions around the world. There's some question as to the ability of all current Security Council members to be able to do that so I question the plan to add more. Furthermore, squabbling over what states to admit could result in no plan being able to be accepted. For instance, China opposes a seat for Japan, Pakistan would not approve India's entry, and Italy questions Germany's bid.

Related News Links:
msnbc.msn.com

[edit on 3/21/2005 by djohnsto77]

I think that re-organization is a good idea. I don't know how the .7% payment idea is going to fly, it'll obviously be a sticking point, but how much is uncertain.

The security council is critical to the most esoteric functions of the UN. It obviously needs to be reformed. When it was created, only the Soviet Union was communist. France was more sympathetic to the american-english bloc, and China was Nationalist China. Then things radically changed. Now even Russia has completely changed. Its kind of silly to think that thats unimportant. So re-organization is necessitated. I've noticed that the Pakistanis are often the ones who contribute a lot of troops to UN missions. Perhaps Pakistan should be given a permanent seat.
I don't think its in anyone's interests to give anyone else veto powers tho.

I think that the re-organization of the human rights commission into a human rights council is interesting. Certainly, opressive states like Cuba, or even china, have no place on a UN board to promote human rights. If one wants to exclude the US then fine, but certianly pushing away the US and favouring Libya was absurd. It showed that the system itself didn't work.

I'd think that the UN should try to incorporate globalist entities that aren't part of it, like the World Bank. Maybe even a legitimization of the Bilderberger group would be a good idea. Give it advisory status or somesuch. But that sort of thing is very unlikely.