Asia-Pacific, Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines

POLITICS: Japan, China Caught in U.N. Tug-of-War

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 28 2005 (IPS) - Just before Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s state visit to the tsunami-hit Sri Lanka last April, an advance team arrived in Colombo to finalise logistical arrangements.

A member of that visiting team came up with an unusual request: “When our prime minister is here,” he pleaded with a Sri Lankan official, “please do not use the Japanese word tsunami.”

And so, in order to respect Chinese political sensitiveness, Sri Lankan officials had to go scrambling for their dictionaries and thesauruses in a mad hunt for alternatives to describe the devastation caused to the island nation last December: “natural disaster”, “tidal wave”, “calamity” and “catastrophe”.

Fortunately, the Sri Lankans never ran out of synonyms. But as far as the Chinese were concerned, Sri Lanka was never hit by a “tsunami”- probably because there was too much of the Japanese in it.

The antagonism between the two Asian nations has reached a boiling point even at the United Nations, with China publicly declaring its opposition to Japan being inducted as a new veto-wielding permanent member of the Security Council.

Asked about Chinese hostility, Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura told reporters Wednesday he did not think that China would block the process of expanding the Security Council, despite its public stance.

“If Japan was able to win the support of two-thirds of member states,” he said, “it was unthinkable that the existing permanent members (including China) would not ratify such a resolution.”

Currently, the Security Council has five veto-wielding permanent members (P-5), namely the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China, and 10 rotating non-permanent members elected for a two-year period.

But a group of four countries – Japan, Germany, India, and Brazil, along with two still unnamed African countries – are making a strong push to join the ranks of the privileged five as permanent members. Japan is taking a lead role in this campaign.

A five-page draft resolution, co-sponsored by the four countries, calls for an increase in the number of members from the present 15 to 25, by adding six permanent and four non-permanent members, as against the current five permanent and 10 non-permanent members.

But attempts to expand the Council – which require a two-thirds majority and a revision of the U.N. charter – are being thwarted by different countries for different reasons.

Any expansion of the Council will involve three resolutions by the 191-member General Assembly. All three resolutions – one calling for an expansion, a second naming the proposed new permanent members, and a third resolution calling for a revision of the U.N. charter to accommodate the new members – will have to be approved by two-thirds of the membership, totaling 128.

Since the third resolution involves the revision of the U.N. charter, it is the only resolution that has to be approved by all five permanent members in the Security Council, in addition to the 128 in the General Assembly.

The speculation at this point is that China may exercise its veto against any new permanent members in the Council, nullifying the chances not only of Japan but also India, Brazil, Germany and the two unnamed African contenders.

Last April, there were anti-Japanese riots in China, followed by a “write-in” campaign where millions of signatures were gathered against Japan. The antagonism was generated primarily at Japan’s war-time past.

Although Japan may have a rightful claim to a permanent seat in the Security Council – based primarily on its increasingly effective role in the world body and its contributions to the United Nations and its myriad agencies – the Japanese are also being criticised by another Asian nation, South Korea.

Asked about this double-barreled attack, Machimura told an earlier U.N. news conference that such sentiments were “understandable.”

“Japan colonised one of those nations and took military action against the other,” he said. But still, he pointed out, Japan took the issue seriously, and had stressed its peaceful outlook to those nations on such occasions as the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, and at the Afro-Asian summit last April.

Machimura told reporters Wednesday that although Japan was confident that no permanent member would conceivably veto a resolution approved by two-thirds of the U.N.’s member states, “it was a reality that the P-5 had veto rights.”

So, he said, Japan “would be very thorough in working hard to convince them” not to exercise their vetoes.

Meanwhile, even the United States, another veto-wielding member, has voiced its opposition to the resolution calling for an expansion of the Security Council.

“First, moving to a vote on this, or any other resolution involving Security Council reform, is bound to be divisive at this stage”, Shirin Tahir-Kheli, a State Department adviser on U.N. reform, told delegates in early July.

She said the U.N. charter is designed in such a way that reform of the Security Council requires “broad consensus”. And that is as it should be, she added.

“We do not yet know the actual numbers of countries that may vote for this resolution. But we do know that world opinion is still highly divided on this issue,” she added.

In an unusual plea to delegates, she said: “We urge you, therefore, to oppose this resolution and, should it come to a vote, to vote against it.”

If the backdoor negotiations and political lobbying end on schedule, the voting on the draft resolution is scheduled to take place in mid-August.

Currently, Japan is the second largest contributor to the U.N.’s regular budget and also one of the largest donors to U.N. development agencies.

Of the total of 1.8 billion dollars for the regular budget this year, the United States accounts for about 440 million dollars, followed by Japan (346 million dollars) and Germany (154 million dollars).

Asked if there would be pressure at home to reduce the level of funding if Japan failed in its bid for a permanent seat, Machimura refused to give a direct answer.

The Japanese government “had absolutely no policy concerning what might occur in the event it did not win a seat, because it thought it would,” he said.

However, he admitted there would be “an increase in national sentiment to reduce U.N. contributions, but his government had made no decision about what might transpire.”

Meanwhile, Italy and Pakistan are leading a campaign to block Germany and India from becoming permanent members, while Argentina and Mexico are opposed to Brazil being given a seat at the table.

But even amongst Africans there is a visible split. The 53-member African Union (AU), the collective voice of the continent, has decided that Africans should stake their claims for two permanent seats because they are the largest single regional group at the United Nations.

Not surprisingly, the AU refused to name names. The two leading contenders for permanent seats are South Africa and Nigeria, with Senegal and Kenya also throwing their hats into the ring.

But the most formidable challenge to the two leaders comes from Egypt, an Arab country which is not only an integral part of the AU but also a member of both the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), which helps advance its Arab and Islamic credentials.