New York: Pakistan hopes to win a seat on the United Nations Security Council as a non-permanent member when the General Assembly holds annual elections to the powerful 15-nation body today (Friday).
Elections for two-year terms — running from January 1, 2012, to December 31, 2013 on the Security Council are held on the basis of regional ballots. Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan are vying for a single seat available to the Asia-Pacific group. Both countries were doing some last-minute lobbying.
Nine countries are vying for the five non-permanent seats on the Security Council that will fall vacant on December 31, 2011. The candidates include Kyrgyzstan, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan and Togo (from the African and Asia-Pacific States); Azerbaijan, Hungary and Slovenia (from the Eastern European States); and Guatemala (from the Latin American and Caribbean States), Director of the General Assembly and Economic and Social Council Affairs Division Ion Botnaru told reporters on Wednesday.
The countries whose terms are expiring this year are Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Gabon, Lebanon and Nigeria. The other five temporary members that will remain through 2012 besides are India, Colombia, Germany, Portugal and South Africa.
Botnaru said three candidates will be elected from Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, one from Eastern Europe and one from Latin America and the Caribbean. All except Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan and Guatemala had previously served on the Council. To win, each country needs to garner support from two thirds of those present and voting in the Assembly, the target being 128. Voting is by secret ballot.
The Security Council has five veto-holding permanent members – the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China — and 10 temporary elected members without vetoes. Pakistan’s earlier terms on the Council were in 2003-04, 1993-94, 1983-84, 1976-77, 1968-69 and 1952-53.
The Pakistan delegation, which is led by Ambassador Abdullah Haroon, appears to be confident of victory. “We have worked very, very hard over the past months,” Ambassador Haroon said. Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, during her address to the UN General Assembly last month, had sought support for Pakistan’s election to the Council.
“At this session of the General Assembly, Pakistan is seeking election to a seat on the Security Council. In soliciting your support, I wish to assure you that we would discharge our responsibilities with utmost dedication to the high ideals and principles of the United Nations,” she had said.
Khar reaffirmed Pakistan’s commitment to multilateralism and the principles and purposes enshrined in the UN Charter as she focused on her country’s role in the the peacekeeping missions around the world, the world body’s flagship activity.
“To date more than 100,000 Pakistani peacekeepers have participated in 38 peacekeeping missions around the world and 125 Pakistani Blue Helmets have laid down their lives in the service of humanity,” the foreign minister told the delegates.
Currently, she said, 9,154 Pakistani peacekeepers are deployed — most of them in Africa — in 8 peacekeeping missions. “As a caring member of the international community, we have maintained this high-level of deployment despite domestic constraints arising from the ongoing fight against terrorism”.
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