Push to enlarge security council looks doomed

[emad]

Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor
Friday July 15, 2005
The Guardian

An ambitious plan to reform the UN security council by expanding it from 15 members to 25 looks set to fail next week despite one of the most intense diplomatic lobbying exercises ever conducted, according to UN sources.

The foreign ministers of Germany, Japan, India and Brazil, fighting for a permanent seat each on a new-look council, are to fly to New York at the weekend to try to rescue the plan.

They need to win two-thirds of the votes of the 191-member UN general assembly. But a security council source said the reform was proving difficult to push through.

"It is madness. They have gone about it completely the wrong way," he said. "It is hard to see how it is going to happen."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1528890,00.html