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MOSCOW. – The UN Security Council should have been expanded “long ago” to include African nations as permanent members, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
Mr Lavrov told Russian media that expanding the body would ensure proper “representation of the world majority”.
“Countries such as India, Brazil, and representatives of Africa along with them should have been in the Security Council on a permanent basis for a long time,” Mr Lavrov said.
The Security Council consists of 15 members, ten of which serve two-year terms and cannot veto resolutions. Formed in 1945, the Security Council can enforce sanctions, authorise military action, and refer cases to the International Criminal Court, but only with the unanimous consent of the five permanent members. These five permanent nations, the US, UK, China, France, and Russia, were the first five states to acquire nuclear weapons, and the veto system and its resulting deadlock was largely engineered to prevent them from engaging in nuclear war with one another. India, Brazil, and South Africa have long lobbied to join the council’s permanent members, and in a statement released during last month’s UN General Assembly in New York, the three countries expressed “frustration with the paralysis” of expansion talks. – RT.com
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