Failure in UNSC reforms dashes African hopes

"The UN Security Council reform is over. There are a lot of losers, there is Africa," said Tom Wheeler of the South African Institute for International Affairs in Johannesburg.

Meant to be the centrepiece of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's ambitious plan to reform the world body as it opens a major summit in New York on Wednesday, UN Security Council reforms have become a victim of competing egos and the interests of rival nations.

Annan is hoping for results on the subject "by the end of the year," but admitted that if significant reform of the UN could not be achieved this year, one might have to wait several years.

After lengthy talks, Africa's final proposal made in Addis Ababa in early August pushed for two permanent Security Council seats -- with the right to veto resolutions -- as well as five non-permanent council seats of which two should go to Africa.

This stance quashed any possible agreement with a proposal made by the so-called G4 nations: Brazil, Germany, India and Japan who had called for boosting council membership to 25 with six new permanent non-veto-wielding seats.

Africa has been divided on the issue with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo saying at the opening of the Addis Ababa summit: "We need to negotiate with other groups, unless our objective is to prevent any decision."

But a group of countries driven by Algeria have considered that the continent must stick to its first demand and would not be associated with the G4 initiative.

John Daniel, of the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) said the discord within Africa highlighted the limitations of an "African position."

"It highlights the fact that there are more things that divide the continent that unify it," Daniel told AFP.