NEW YORK: Reiterating its firm opposition to expanding the United Nations Security Council’s permanent members, Pakistan has questioned how adding new permanent seats to the 15-member body could enhance its representativeness and effectiveness.

Speaking in the Intergovernmental Negotiations on Security Council Reform, Pakistan’s Permanent to the United Nations Maleeha Lodhi said no cogent answer has ever been given to how the move would make the Security Council more representative.

Adding new permanent members would in fact have the opposite effect, the Pakistani envoy said.

Calling for comprehensive reform of the Security Council, Ambassador Lodhi warned against a piecemeal approach and argued that the negotiating process must be member-state driven, aimed at achieving the widest possible political acceptance.

Reform, she stressed, must also be based on principles of democracy, transparency and accountability.

Pointing to the role of non-permanent members in the Security Council in bringing about a gradual improvement in its working methods, Ambassador Lodhi made the case that an increase in such members would further improve the functioning of the council.

“The fate of the rules of procedure of the Security Council is also dependent on the composition of the Council,” she added.

She said that all member states had expressed a desire for greater participation in Security Council’s work, as well as “enhanced transparency and accountability of the council”.

“If we all truly share these ideals”, Ambassador Lodhi said, then “we must be able to justify our positions in other key areas of reform on the same principles”.

“One cannot claim to seek a more democratic, accountable, transparent, effective and representative council in one key area of reform and then propose ideas in other areas that undercut the same principles,” she argued.

Ambassador Lodhi, while underlining all member states' desire to participate in and be informed about the Security Council's work, said that they do not view the council as the preserve of a few ostensibly powerful states.

“This is why Pakistan has always stressed expansion of the council's membership that serves the interest of all member States,” she added.

Additional permanent seats, she said, will “usurp the equal opportunity rights” of other Member States of the General Assembly to serve in the council.

“How can justice, fair play, transparency and accountability be promoted by such an unfair expansion of the council,” she questioned.