4
The consultations centered on the following aspects of Security Council reform:
a) The question of the veto;
b) The size of enlargement of the Council;
c) The categories of membership;
d) Regional representation and individual state membership;
e) The respective mandates of the Task Force set up by the President of the
General Assembly and that of the Open-ended Working Group;
f) The proposed intermediary approach and its review mechanism;
g) Modalities for the envisaged intergovernmental negotiations.
5. Meanwhile, during the reporting period, continued dynamism around the question of
Security Council Reform was sustained. The President of the General Assembly
encouraged the members to intensify efforts towards identifying a framework and
negotiables for the intergovernmental negotiations, in order to promote the process.
Further to this the following emerged:
a) A group of countries, namely, Cyprus, Malaysia, Netherlands, Romania, and
the UK, and led by Germany, in a letter dated 20th March 2008, proposed an
overarching process, the stated objective of which was to reflect elements
that required negotiations, on the basis of pragmatism and feasibility, building
on the report of the two facilitators and other progress achieved during the
61st session of the General Assembly and to give a sense of direction for the
future.
b) The Resolution No. 11/11-P(IS) adopted by the Organisation of the Islamic
Conference at its 11th Summit held in March 2008 in Dakar, Senegal, in which
it stated that SCR must give adequate representation to Islamic countries,
and that anything else would be unacceptable.
c)
The letter of the African Group to the PGA dated 20th March 2008 urging him
to convene a meeting of the Open-ended Working Group as indicated in his
previous communication, to enable the membership of the United Nations to
address both the framework and modalities that could lead to
intergovernmental negotiation taking into account the positions and aspiration
of various stakeholders, and which could lead to the widest possible
agreement.
d) The letter dated 3rd April 2008 from the “Uniting for Consensus” group of
states to the PGA, in which they, among other things, argued that agreement