Addressing the 70th session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Friday, Gholam-Hossein Dehqani referred to the “expansion of the Security Council” as one of the elements of a necessary overall reform in the global body’s structure.
The session was held for a debate on agenda item 121, entitled “the question of equitable representation on an increase in the membership of the Security Council, and related matters.”
What follows in the Iranian envoy’s full speech:
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
Mr. President,
I thank you for convening this debate. We believe that making the necessary arrangement for a successful debate and conducting the upcoming negotiations on such sensitive and important issue in a fruitful way require extensive consultations with all Member States. We welcome and congratulate Ambassador Sylvie Lucas of Luxemburg, as the new Chair of Inter-Governmental Negotiations (IGN) and assure her of our support to move forward our common agenda.
Mr. President,
The Security Council with, its current composition and working methods, which are by far outdated, proved to be incapable to undertake its very important responsibility of maintaining international peace and security. The entire membership shares the goals of a more representative, effective, democratic, accountable and transparent Council. The question is: how to reach those goals?
The UN membership, during the 62nd Session of the General Assembly, embarked on the process of IGN On the basis of Decision 62/557. This Decision mandates this Assembly to achieve a holistic reform on five key issues: categories of membership, the veto, size and working methods, regional representation, and the relation between the Security Council and the General Assembly and other important bodies. Expansion of the Council is one of the elements of the overall reform while other four elements are equally important and all five are linked. We believe that no Council reform would be successful unless and until, all five interrelated clusters are appropriately, comprehensively and inclusively addressed.
Many abortive initiatives to change the composition or improving working methods or decision making processes of the Council, lie at root of the noticeable decline in the trust in this important Organ. Thus, any attempt to reform Security Council should be on the basis of a general agreement among all member states, on the substance and process. Helping such an agreement to emerge, we need genuine political will.
Despite the lack of progress on the main issues, we still believe that the process of the reform of the Council should not be subject to any predetermined or superficial time-table. Any unconsidered and careless decision would run the risk of harming this very delicate process which is of vital importance and great interest for the whole membership and the Organization and will have far-reaching impacts for the whole world. Therefore, all efforts should be made to reach the broadest possible agreement among the Member States. Text-based negotiation certainly is one efficient way forward, at the same time we need to agree on such a text. I wish to reiterate that Iran considers the IGN as the only appropriate and irreplaceable forum. IGN must continue to be Member States-driven and function on a fully comprehensive and transparent manner.
My delegation welcomes the continued efforts in this regards and is willing to actively participate in the process.
I thank you Mr. President