NEW YORK, May 15: The United States has warned Japan, India, Germany and Brazil — aspirants for permanent seats in the expanded UN Security Council— that it will not support their efforts unless they agree not to seek veto power, the New York Times reported on Sunday

“Administration officials said they were opposed to giving new members veto power out of concern that it might paralyse the Security Council,” the newspaper said.

The four nations — Brazil, India, Germany and Japan — are unhappy about that position, the Times said. “The Security Council is not like an aircraft, with first class, business and economy seats,” Ryozo Kato, Japan’s ambassador to the United States was quoted as saying in Washington.

However, G-4 nations are nonetheless plunging ahead with an ambitious worldwide lobbying campaign. Japan has summoned more than 100 ambassadors and chiefs of mission from its embassies around the world to a rally next week in Tokyo, where Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura will press them to lobby their host governments for support, the newspaper said.

The United States’ view of the G-4’s effort remains uncertain, leading some diplomats to worry that Washington may actually oppose expanding the Security Council because it would dilute American power, the Times said.

Fuelling that view, Shirin Tahirkheli, a special adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on United Nations reform, told the General Assembly last month that the United States “would like to move forward on the basis of broad consensus,” the Times said.

On the broader question of United States support, Ms Rice has sent conflicting signals, the newspaper noted. During a visit to Tokyo in March she said: “The United States unambiguously supports a permanent seat for Japan on the United Nations Security Council”. But when asked about seats for India and Brazil, she offered statements nearly identical in their evasiveness. “We will look at the issue of Security Council reform, but it should not get separated out from broad United Nations Reform because we want this institution to be as strong as possible,” she said in Brasilia last month.

Besides the four countries pooling their efforts, three African nations — Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa — are conducting vigorous individual campaigns for some of the six new permanent seats proposed in March by Secretary General Kofi Annan. The purpose of the change is to have the Council reflect the current balance of global power better than is the case with the original five permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — and 10 members elected to two-year terms.

In his report, “In Larger Freedom”, the Secretary-General has proposed expanding the Council to 24 members from 15, providing two formulas for doing so.