UNSC president Switzerland advocates 'intermediate reform' with longer terms for some elected members

United Nations, Oct 2 (IANS) Switzerland advocates an "intermediate solution” for expanding the Security Council with some countries elected for a longer time with the right to re-election, while not ruling out the addition of permanent members if there is a consensus, Council President Pascale Christine Baeriswyl said on Tuesday.

"We are in favour of the so-called intermediate solution, which means you would have elected members for a longer term than two years, which could be re-elected immediately, but would still go through legitimatisation by the General Assembly," said Baeriswyl, the permanent representative of Switzerland said at a news conference after taking over Council's rotating presidency.

Speaking in her national capacity, she indicated that this could be an interim solution to the vigorous opposition of some countries to expanding permanent seats that has blocked reforms, but Berne was open to adding permanent members if there was a consensus.

"At the moment, the solution we are promoting is the so-called intermediate solution," she said.

She added: "If there was a consensus, a large consensus, (for expansion) with additional permanent seats, then we would, of course, reconsider."

The Council should be more representative, with especially a better role for African nations, she said.

Baeriswyl also said that Switzerland supported text-based negotiations for Council reform, a procedure that faces obstacles in the Inter-Governmental Negotiations (IGN) process preventing progress.

IGN Co-Facilitators in the last General Assembly session, Permanent Representative Tareq Albanai of Kuwait and Alexander Marschik of Austria, "have been doing a great job" and "I expect that based on their work, we can make an important step forward", she said.

But more important, she said was reforming the working methods of the Council, in particular, the exercise of vetoes by permanent members on issues like genocide, and in imposing sanctions.

(Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in and followed at @arulouis)

--IANS

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