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Japan to make last-minute push for UN council seat
Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura left for London on Sunday for a last-ditch effort to gain support from African states for Japan's bid to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Machimura may skip a series of regional meetings in Laos from Wednesday, including an Asia-Pacific security conference, to focus on the U.N. campaign, even though his absence could be seen as a slight by some Asian countries. Japan has stepped up a decade-old drive for a permanent seat, eager to win diplomatic status equal to its economic clout and its 20 percent share of the world body's bills, but it has met opposition from China and U.S. support has beeen half-hearted. Japan, Germany, Brazil and India, known as the Group of Four (G4), are negotiating with the African Union (AU) over competing proposals to enlarge the 15-member U.N. Security Council. The G4 wants an expansion to 25 seats, including six new permanent members who would not have veto powers. The African Union wants a 26-member council, with five new non-permanent seats rather than the G4's four, and it advocates veto powers for new permanent members. Machimura and his G4 counterparts will meet AU foreign ministers in London on Monday to try to forge a joint resolution. The G4 is hoping for a U.N. General Assembly vote on a resolution -- the first step needed for Security Council expansion -- by the end of the month. They need substantial support from the 53-member African Union to have any hope of gaining the two-thirds approval in the 191-member General Assembly needed for changing the composition of the council. "If we have the feeling that we will get 35-plus African votes, we want a vote in July. But this is a G-4 decision on when we want to vote," Brazil's deputy U.N. ambassador, Henrique Valle, told reporters in New York on Saturday. NATIONAL EMBARRASSMENT If the London talks open the way to a General Assembly vote, Machimura may fly to New York and skip the meetings in Laos from July 27-29, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said. "If there is to be a vote this month, there will probably be discussions among ... various countries in New York," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hatsuhisa Takashima said on Friday. The last step for enlargement involves a change in the U.N. Charter and would need approval from the five current permanent council members, which include China. Japan's relations with China have been strained by a series of disputes and its U.N. bid was among the factors that triggered violent anti-Japanese protests in Chinese cities in April. "This is a difficult proposal ... It is hard to tell until the final stage," Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters on Friday, when asked about the prospects for the G4 proposal. Failure could spark annoyance with Washington and anger at China among Japanese lawmakers, already irked by Beijing's criticism of Koizumi's visits to a Tokyo shrine for war dead where convicted war criminals are also honoured. It would also cause deep embarrassment, especially if it highlighted a lack of Asian support for the Japanese bid. "What really shocked the Foreign Ministry was that no significant Asian country sponsored the proposal, not even Indonesia, which relies heavily on Japanese aid," said Gerald Curtis, a political science professor at New York's Columbia University. "It shows how poorly it's been handled."
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