UN Faces Clash Over Iran's Security Council Bid By Patrick Goodenough June 24, 2008 CNS News Original Source: http://www.cnsnews.com/public/Content/Article.aspx?rsrcid=19253 (CNSNews.com) - Two weeks before Americans go to the polls in the fall, an election at the United Nations will pose a challenge to the outgoing Bush administration and possibly to its successor as well. At stake: five two-year seats on the U.N. Security Council that will coincide with the first two years of a McCain or Obama administration. And contending for one of the seats is Iran, a country whose nuclear activities have exercised the Security Council in recent years and will likely continue to do so. Iran is one of just two countries vying for a seat earmarked for an Asian country, the other being Japan. Mongolia had been interested, but withdrew from the contest last year. The Security Council bears primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. The last time Iran was a member of the UNSC was in 1956, more than two decades before the Pahlavi regime was replaced by the Islamic Republic. In the years since 1956, Japan has held a seat nine times, most recently in 2005-6. The council has five permanent seats -- held by the U.S., Britain, France, China and Russia -- and 10 rotating seats, allocated according to the U.N.'s regional groups: three to Africa, two to Asia, two to Latin America and the Caribbean, two to the Western Europe and Others group, and one to Eastern Europe. To win a seat, a country must obtain the support of two-thirds of the 192-member General Assembly, voting by secret ballot. Countries that are endorsed by their regional group beforehand are usually elected easily. If the Asian regional caucus cannot decide between Iran and Japan - or any other candidate that may enter the race later - then the General Assembly will vote for all of the hopefuls, holding as many rounds of voting as are needed until the required majority is obtained. According to the U.N. Charter, the General Assembly must pay due regard, when voting for UNSC members, to countries' contribution to the maintenance of international peace and security and to the other purposes of the Organization. Japan will support its candidacy by pointing to its status as the second-largest provider of the U.N. budget - after the U.S. - and the fact it has served more often on the council in the past half century than any other non-permanent member (Japan has been campaigning for a permanent seat in a proposed expanded Security Council, but long-running attempts to reform the body have yet to bear fruit.) Iran will be counting on the backing of fellow members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which holds 56 votes of a total of 192 in the General Assembly, and is http://www.cnsnews.com/ForeignBureaus/archive/200806/FOR20080623a.html \t _blank pushing for greater, permanent Islamic representation on the council. An ever bigger pool of potential support for Tehran could come from members of the 115-nation Non-Aligned Movement, a grouping of developing nations that has backed Iran in its dispute with the West at the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran is expected to lobby for support when it hosts a NAM ministerial conference in late July. The NAM is currently chaired by Cuba, and includes some of Iran's closest allies such as Syria and Venezuela - but also U.S. allies like Singapore and the Philippines. Malign influence The U.S. and its allies say that Iran has defied the U.N. repeatedly over its nuclear program, which they suspect provides a cover for attempts to acquire nuclear weapons capability. Iran insists the activities are peaceful, solely for electricity-generation and research, and has refused to suspend uranium enrichment. Apart from the nuclear issue, Iran is at odds with the U.S. over its backing for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian self-rule areas, and its suspected support for anti-coalition insurgents in Iraq. Support for terrorism is a violation of UNSC resolution 1373, passed two weeks after 9/11. Under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, relations between Tehran and the West have deteriorated further over his frequent threats against Israel. Critics of Iran say it would have a malign influence in the Security Council. According to records compiled by the Democracy Coalition Project, Iran last year voted against five key human rights-related resolutions before the General Assembly, relating to Iran itself, Burma, North Korea, Belarus and a death penalty moratorium. State Department figures show that Iran voted the opposite way to the U.S. position at the U.N. in 2007 on 13 key issues that directly affected United States interests and on which the United States lobbied extensively. The UNSC has since 2006 imposed three rounds of sanctions against Iran for its refusal to stop enriching uranium. Earlier this year, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the ranking Republican on the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Iranian council membership would reinforce the urgency of undertaking either wholesale U.N. reform or developing an alternative to the corrupt U.N. system. A Japan-Iran clash at the U.N. would produce the most clear-cut contest between pro- and anti-U.S. governments in a world body election since a marathon tussle in 2006 for a UNSC seat allocated to Latin America. In that contest, the U.S. backed and lobbied hard for Guatemala, while the other candidate, President Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, won the support of Russia, China, the 22-nation Arab League, and a significant number of developing countries. For the next three weeks, the extent of division in the General Assembly was evident, as 47 rounds of voting failed to end a deadlock and give either country a two-thirds majority. Eventually, the regional group agreed on Panama as a compromise candidate, and it won the 48th round easily.