Japan, India, Brazil, Germany vow new UN council bid

[bemildred]

Japan, India, Brazil and Germany vowed to make a new attempt for permanent membership on the UN Security Council, and Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi appealed for support from world leaders.

Foreign Ministers and top officials of the so-called G4 agreed to pursue their efforts at a meeting on the sidelines of the UN world summit in New York.

Their first bid ran into opposition from the United States and China and failed to get crucial support from Africa for the necessary two-thirds of member countries' votes in the UN General Assembly to change the world body's charter.

"We should re-examine our strategy ... by looking back at what was good and what was wrong," Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura was quoted as saying by a Japanese official.

Turkish Press

[DavidDvorkin]

1. It would be better to discuss eliminating the Security Council

It could be changed every decade or so in order to make sure that it was controlled by the current great powers instead of reflecting the great-power status of decades earlier, but that still means that the important decisions of the UN are made by the great powers. Better to have all decisions made by the General Assembly.

Admittedly, this opens a bigger can of worms: The General Assembly should be a directly elected parliament, not the representatives of governments. Imagine any group of countries trying to push that change through!