Germany hopes to join Brazil and India in pressing for reform of the UN Security Council while all three sit on the council in 2011, it said on Wednesday. Foreign Ministry spokesman Andreas Peschke said Germany believed the postwar era that produced a Security Council with five permanent veto-wielding members - the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China - was over, and that changes were needed.
The so-called Group of Four (G4) nations - Japan, Brazil, India and Germany - have for years pressed for permanent seats on the council, and Peschke pointed out that all barring Japan would occupy rotating seats this year. "Of course we hope to use the momentum because, in our view, it's high time we had a reform of the Security Council, quite simply because the Security Council does not reflect the world as it is today, but as it was at the end of World War Two.