Liaison Newsletter > LIAISON-Canada Electronic Newsletter #5

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Five New Countries Elected to sit on the Security Council

On October 21, 1996, Japan, Kenya, Sweden, Costa Rica and Portugal won two-year positions as Non-Permanent members on the United Nations Security Council. Every year the General Assembly elects five new members to occupy five of the ten Non-Permanent seats for a period of two years. The new Members will take up their seats on January 1, 1997, replacing the outgoing Botswana, Germany, Honduras, Indonesia, and Italy.

Australia was reported to have been the most disappointed at the decision that excluded it from securing two-year tenure on the Council. Mr. Richard Butler, the Australian Ambassador to the United Nations, suggested that some of the votes may have even been purchased. "Delinquent states’ dues were paid in the understanding that they would vote in a certain way," said Butler. Indeed, many countries did suddenly pay their long overdue arrears, if only to be able to vote in the General Assembly’s balloting on the Security Council selection.

Among the other countries that had been vying for seats were Bolivia and India. The latter may have been punished by the decision for its veto against the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) on Nuclear weapons that many States had been hoping to establish by the end of the year.

Japan, Kenya, Sweden, Costa Rica and Portugal join five other Non-Permanent Members on the Council, and five Permanent Members (P5). China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States, have been on the Council as the P5 since its establishment (although Taiwan was replaced by the People’s Republic of China in 1973, and the Soviet Union by the Russian Federation in 1990). Chile, Egypt, Guinea-Bissau, Poland and South Korea will serve until the end of next year.