General Assembly to elect five non-permanent members on Friday

UNITED NATIONS: The UN General Assembly is set to meet on Friday to elect five non-permanent members of the Security Council, as candidates for a seat on the world's body's power centre stepped up their campaign.

Those elected will serve from January 1, 2012, through the end of 2013.

They will replace Lebanon, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Brazil, Gabon and Nigeria, whose terms end on December 31. Pakistan, a six-term candidate for the Asian seat on the 15-member Council, faces a challenge Kyrgyzstan, a Central Asian country, which is contesting the election for the first time.

The Asian seat is being vacated by Lebanon. Pakistan's earlier terms on the Council were in 2003-04, 1993-94, 1983-84, 1976- 77, 1968-69 and 1952-53.

The General Assembly, which is composed of 193 members, holds elections for non-permanent members by secret ballot.

Two third majority 128 votes are required for election even if a candidate is uncontested. In case a candidate falls short of the target, re-polls are conducted until the required number of votes is secured.

If a situation of deadlock develops, then compromise candidate are brought in. Since the voting is by secret ballot, no definite prediction can be made about the outcome.

The Pakistan delegation, which is led by Ambassador Abdullah Haroon, appears to be confident of success.

"We have worked very, very hard over the past months," Ambassador Haroon told APP.

Pakistan has been conducting intense lobbying not only at UN Headquarters in New York but also in the capitals around the world. To complement those efforts, Ambassador Haroon was also instrumental in the holding of three major exhibitions about:

Pakistani troops at work in UN peacekeeping operations, the country's historical monuments, religious sites and mountain landscapes as well as the Buddhist Gandharan all aimed at projecting Pakistan's soft image.

At a largely-attended reception hosted by Ambassador Haroon last month, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar made a strong pitch for support of its candidacy for the Council seat, saying if elected the Pakistani delegation would actively work to advance the shared goals of promoting peace, harmony and security in the world.

"Pakistan is at your service, and I request your most valuable support for our candidature," she told a galaxy of Foreign ministers and heads of the missions accredited to the United Nations attending the reception.

Khar reaffirmed Pakistan's commitment to multilateralism and the principles and purposes enshrined in the UN Charter as she focused on her country's role in the peacekeeping missions around the world, the world body's flagship activity.

"Till date more than 100,000 Pakistani peacekeepers have participated in 38 peacekeeping missions around the world and 125 Pakistani Blue Helmets have laid down their lives in the service of humanity," the foreign minister told the delegates.

Currently, she said, 9,154 Pakistani peacekeepers are deployed most of them in Africa in 8 peacekeeping missions. "As a caring member of the international community, we have maintained this high-level of deployment despite domestic constraints arising from the ongoing fight against terrorism".

While there is a contest in the Asian Group, the Latin American and Caribbean group is putting forward a clean slate, with Guatemala being the group's sole candidate for its single seat.

The African group is offering a de facto clean slate for one of its two reserved seats and two candidates for the remaining one.

This arose from the informal agreement which the group shares with the Asian group to alternate setting aside one seat for an Arab state from with the groups.

The African group has endorsed Togo as the sole candidate for the first seat (thus offering a clean slate for that seat), while Morocco and Mauritania will compete for the Arab seat. With only 23 members, the Eastern European group is the most competitive in elections to the Security Council.

Azerbaijan would be serving on the Council for the first time if elected in preference to experienced candidates Hungary and Slovenia. It's approach has been as the anti-EU candidate from Eastern Europe, making the case that election of one of its competitors would give the EU a full third of the Council's membership.

Copyright APP (Associated Press of Pakistan), 2011