G4 nations seek urgent UNSC reforms

India and other G4 countries, Brazil, Germany and Japan, all aspiring for permanent membership of the Security Council, have called for intensifying efforts for urgent UN Security Council reforms "to better reflect geopolitical realities of the 21st century".

In a joint statement issued after a meeting of the foreign ministers of the G4 nations on the margins of the UN General Assembly, they "underscored that, almost 70 years after the creation of the United Nations, reform of the Security Council is long overdue".

Besides Indian External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid, the meeting was attended by Brazil's Luiz Alberto Figueiredo Machado, Germany's Guido Westerwelle and Japan's Fumio Kishida.

They agreed that difficulties of the Security Council in dealing with international challenges, including current ones, have further highlighted the need for UN Security Council reform.

This would "better reflect geopolitical realities of the 21st century and make the Council more broadly representative, efficient and transparent and thus to further enhance its effectiveness and the legitimacy and implementation of its decisions," they said.

Recalling that almost 10 years ago, in the Outcome Document of the 2005 World Summit, international leaders committed themselves to an early reform of the Security Council, the "ministers stressed the need to intensify efforts to translate, at the latest by 2015, the existing agreement into concrete outcomes".

The G4 countries reiterated their commitments as aspiring new permanent members of the UN Security Council, as well as their support for each other's candidatures.

They also reaffirmed their view of the importance of developing countries, in particular Africa, to be represented in both the permanent and non-permanent categories of an enlarged Council.

Underlining the need to achieve concrete progress in the 68th Session of the UN General Assembly, the ministers said they looked forward to working closely with John Ashe, UN General Assembly president and the Chair of the Intergovernmental Negotiations "to bring about the urgently needed reform of the Security Council".