Singapore

Let me congratulate you, Sir, on your election to the presidency of the fifty- second session of the General Assembly. I also thank our outgoing President, Mr. Razali Ismail, for his untiring efforts. He catalysed a change in our approach to Security Council reform and set a new trajectory for it. For several years, we have all recognized the imperative of United Nations reform. Today, the issue of the moment is still reform. This summer, the Secretary- General challenged us with a package of reforms that he accurately described as the most extensive and far- reaching in the 52-year history of this Organization. This is, of course, not the first time a Secretary-General has attempted to remake this Organization. But now that the more extravagant of post-cold-war hopes for the United Nations have faded, I believe that this package represents a more focused, realistic and practical approach. We congratulate the Secretary-General for his initiative. The Secretary-General's objective clearly is to enable the United Nations to do better what we all require it to do. We all take the United Nations importance as axiomatic. Therefore, his intention to reconfigure the United Nations management and strengthen the United Nations ability to perform its core functions should be generally acceptable to the majority, even if every particular element of his proposals has not been fully elaborated or may not be entirely to everyone's taste. In the larger interests of this Organization, we should all welcome the thrust of the Secretary-General's proposals and not take issue with too many details. Singapore adopts such an approach. We have, for example, questions about some specific details of his proposals to place the United Nations finances on a sounder footing and to streamline its operations. But we have nonetheless contributed actively to the effort to streamline budgetary and administrative procedures in the Secretariat and will continue to do so. By taking a pragmatic and eclectic approach, we hope to help move the reform process forward, even if we may have questions on specific aspects. We will continue to work with the Secretary-General and other Member States to make the United Nations a more efficient and effective Organization — one that will serve the interests of all its Members, big and small, developing as well as industrialized. The Secretary-General's proposals on the United Nations management, administration and structure have sometimes been directly or indirectly linked to the ongoing effort by Member States to prepare the United Nations political leadership for the twenty-first century through Security Council reform. We are not confident that this is the correct approach. We have been engaged in this broader effort for almost four years. It is a fact that the process has been difficult. Progress has been slow. We have reached the conclusion that the prospects for further progress are not good. 9 We have arrived at this conclusion with great reluctance and without rancour. Progress has not been slow because of the ill will of one State or another. Prospects for further progress are dim not merely because one country or another has lacked the will to cut through the web of vested interests. The reasons are more fundamental. They go beyond the volitions and intentions of individual countries and are embedded in the nature and inescapable realities of international organization in an international system that is still largely defined by relations between sovereign States. No great Power, or even a Power with aspirations to greatness, has ever been willing to submit its own vital interests to United Nations jurisdiction. This fact of international life underlies the current reform stalemate. The necessity of United Nations reform may be widely accepted. But what the great Powers want is not a strong United Nations per se. They want a United Nations just strong and credible enough to serve as an effective instrument of their will and policies. It is only small countries that are more inclined to take the United Nations on its own terms and in its own right. Small countries are not necessarily more virtuous — we merely have fewer options. This reality has been underscored by our discussions on Security Council reform. The really crucial decisions that will allow Security Council reform to move decisively forward or stall it indefinitely are going to be taken in Washington, London, Paris, Beijing or Moscow. It has not been clear that the current permanent members really want change except on their own terms and in circumstances that will not erode their current status and prerogatives. Critical ambiguities in their positions have held up progress and will continue to do so unless clarified. One school of thought is that we should decide on Security Council reform during this General Assembly. I can well sympathize with the frustrations of those who feel that the current debate is going nowhere. But precisely because this is so, we need to ask: What is it that we are going to decide upon? The answer is far from clear. Indeed, the entire Security Council reform process is in danger of being lost in a wilderness of logical contradictions and ambiguities. Please permit me to spell out some of these contradictions and ambiguities. Several permanent members have been categoric only in their desire to see Japan and Germany as new permanent members. Many other countries, including my own, would agree that, when general agreement is reached on the expansion of the Security Council, Japan and Germany should be new permanent members. But an equally large number of countries, and I believe Japan and Germany are among them, would also agree that any general agreement on expansion must include some developing countries as new permanent members to reflect new international realities. On this point most permanent members have been far less clear. When challenged, several of them have recently for the first time conceded that in addition to Japan and Germany they would in principle be willing to accept three permanent seats for developing nations from the regions of Africa, Asia and Latin America. This is welcome progress. Nevertheless, important ambiguities still remain. How will the three developing countries be chosen? It has been suggested that individual countries be chosen by a two-thirds vote of the membership as a whole. It has also been suggested that they could be subject to some system of rotation within the regions. Both, however, are problematic concepts. Can a country really legitimately represent a region if it is chosen outside the region? Will the two-thirds membership prescribed by the Charter really be sufficiently familiar with conditions outside their own respective regions to make an informed and legitimate choice, binding on regions of which they are not members? Then, conceptually, is it not inherently contradictory for a member to be said to be permanent but nonetheless be subject to rotation? Who will such a member represent: its own national interests or the region's interests? Can it really represent the latter? Indeed, what is the regional interest? How will it be determined? Is the regional interest necessarily synonymous with the interests of the larger members of a region? Can a rotational system work for any region except Africa, where it is already an established principle? None of these questions will be easy to answer. They have been debated for the last three years without satisfactory answers. But unless there are clear answers, my concern is that suggestions for a differentiated selection process for permanent members from among the newly industrialized and newly developing countries will only lead to permanent stress, divisions and conflict for most regions, or it will lead to a two-stage decision- making process where the elevation of Germany and Japan will not for many years, if ever, be matched by any degree of consensus for the developing nations of Asia, 10 Africa and Latin America. Such a discriminatory situation would be clearly unacceptable to a majority of Member States, including many of those that aspire to permanent status. But even if we could simultaneously reach agreement on the identity of the three permanent members from among the developing countries, together with Japan and Germany, there are further complexities of equal importance. What will be the status of the new permanent members? Even those current permanent members that have strongly supported Germany's and Japan's aspirations have been silent on whether Germany and Japan should have the veto. Even treaty allies of Japan and Germany, countries that have pledged to go to war at their side and for them, have taken no position on this crucial question. This, in our view, makes it even more difficult to believe that any developed country permanent member would ever allow any developing country to acquire the veto, even though they have made it clear that they want to retain unrestricted use of the veto for themselves. The powers of new permanent members are not questions that can be deferred to a later date merely to make it easier to quickly determine the identity of the new permanent members. They are intrinsic to the very notion and definition of permanent membership. Is a new permanent member really a permanent member if it does not have the same powers as the original five permanent members? Article 27 has been controversial from the very founding of the United Nations. There is now a wide consensus that the use of the veto should be curtailed with a view to its eventual abolition. The reality, of course, is that this is not going to happen any time soon. Any attempt to curtail the veto will be vetoed. Undemocratic though it may be, the veto will be with us for the foreseeable future. And it is not without a certain utility in so far as it helps prevent conflicts among the major Powers which could undermine the United Nations. It has been argued that the veto acts as a fail-safe mechanism. The veto will prevent those countries that are so essential to the maintenance of peace and security and to the operation of the United Nations that they deserve permanent status from being compelled to take any action that would lead to conflicts among themselves. Now, if this justification for the retention of the veto by the original five permanent members has any validity, then the question that arises is whether any new permanent member that is not given the veto is really deserving of that status? Would such countries really enjoy the international stature and the capability and clout to make such a crucial contribution to international peace and security as to warrant being given permanent status? And if not, why give them permanent status? Could they not make financial and other contributions to the United Nations in some other, way as many countries with no such aspirations already do? If there is a need for new permanent members, and I believe there is a need, then the veto is not a question that can be postponed or discussed separately from the issue of their identities. Three out of the five current permanent members have also been adamantly opposed to the expansion of the Security Council beyond a total of 20 or 21 members. This effectively blocks any expansion of the Security Council. Let us suppose that agreement is reached on the identity of the five new permanent members: Japan and Germany and three from the developing countries, whichever they may be. But if the current permanent members that argue against an expansion of the Security Council beyond 21 members remain firm in their position, this would mean only one additional non-permanent seat for the 165 remaining members of the United Nations, all of which have a desire and a right to serve the United Nations on the Security Council at least occasionally. This inequitable arrangement would certainly be rejected by the majority. Moreover, creating five new permanent members in a Security Council of 21 will seriously upset the present balance between permanent seats and non- permanent seats. This is also a situation which will not be acceptable to the majority of the Member States. It will certainly not command the support of the two thirds of the membership required by the Charter to effect any change to the Security Council's present composition. Those that have argued for an expansion of the Security Council to no more than 21 members have done so on the grounds that this is the maximum number that can function effectively and efficiently. These are concerns that we should all share. Nobody wants an ineffective or inefficient Security Council. But no one has yet made a convincing argument that a Security Council of, say, 26 members, as has been proposed by the Non- Aligned Movement, would be any less efficient or effective than a Security Council of 21. This is of course assuming that effectiveness and efficiency are not narrowly defined as merely making it more difficult for 11 any of the current permanent members and their allies to ensure that nobody can prevent them from having their own way. In any case, can we really decide on the effectiveness and efficiency of an expanded Security Council before we know what the powers of the new permanent members are going to be? This leads us into a tautological situation. We cannot know how an expanded Security Council consisting of an expanded number of permanent members will operate because, as I argued a moment ago, the definition of what constitutes a new permanent member cannot be separated from the question of the veto. And the current permanent members have refused to pronounce on this. At this point, effectiveness and efficiency as an argument against a Security Council of more than 21 breaks down completely. I could go on with my analysis. But I hope I have demonstrated that several critical aspects of the positions of the major countries on Security Council reform need further clarification before progress can be made. I do not believe that the ambiguities and contradictions are going to be resolved soon. They are the natural consequence of sovereign States pursuing their national interests. The position of permanent members will have a decisive influence on whether or not Security Council reform moves forward. As things presently stand, it seems clear that what will not evoke a veto from any of the current permanent members will not command the support of the two-thirds membership required to make the necessary Charter changes. At the same time, what would attract the support of the vast majority of United Nations Members is more likely than not to provoke a veto. This is where, like it or not, we currently stand. A similar case could be made on the closely related question of financial reform. This too, has its own deep complexities; its own intrinsic contradictions between what would be acceptable to the majority and what the major Powers want. Not every change is necessarily for the better. We should therefore make progress cautiously, especially on such fundamental questions. This is why the Non- Aligned Movement has wisely decided that efforts at restructuring the Security Council should not be subject to any imposed time-frame. Of course, there has been an evolution in the positions of the major Powers over the last four years. There will be further positive changes over time. But it will certainly take time. No country readily changes the status quo if it benefits from the status quo. My point is therefore that, given this reality, it would be a historic mistake to artificially link the Secretary-General's managerial, administrative and structural reforms to far more contentious questions of Security Council or other matters that would require the support of the two-thirds membership needed to effect Charter amendments as defined in Article 108. There is no need to handicap ourselves in this way. Not all aspects of the Secretary-General's proposals are equally acceptable to all Members. But, taken as a whole, it will be far easier to reach a general agreement on more aspects of the Secretary-General's proposals if they are considered in themselves and not linked to more politicized and therefore more intractable questions. This is not to say that Security Council or financial reforms are unimportant. Of course, they are important. We should continue to work on them. The issues I have raised are complex. But there is no avoiding them. I remain confident that with patience and sincerity we will eventually find our way out of the thickets of ambiguity into which we have wandered. I am confident that we will eventually succeed in our common endeavour to enhance the ability of the Security Council to exercise leadership in the management of global affairs and enhance its legitimacy to do so. But this is only one facet of United Nations reform. The Security Council is not necessarily the only United Nations body that is important, nor even always the most important. The Security Council is empowered to act on behalf of the membership as a whole on questions of international peace and security. It has no direct mandate to act on behalf of the membership as a whole on many other urgent international questions. International peace and security are no longer the only definition of high international politics. Development and the environment are two areas that are obvious and of increasing importance. Such issues in which the Security Council is not the lead United Nations body have risen in prominence on the post-cold-war international agenda. They will remain high priorities for the majority. There can be no legitimate leadership role for the United Nations that does not deal with such issues. Herein lies the critical importance of the Secretary- General's proposals. They can make an immediate and tangible difference to issues affecting the entire international community which are beyond the scope of the Security Council. Action on the Secretary-General's proposals, therefore, should not have to await general agreement on Security Council reform. By focusing on 12 his proposals, by subjecting them to a thorough and positive discussion, I believe we can move urgently needed United Nations reforms forward at a faster pace than has hitherto characterized the reform process. And we can still remain seized of, but not hostage to, issues that may take more time to command general agreement or that require Charter amendment.