1. Connections between the five key issues The issue being discussed today regards the ways by which the Security Council could be enlarged. We must compare our positions and debate the issue so as to have available all the essential elements of our negotiation in this informal session. A first inevitable step toward achieving this objective is to discuss the so-called “key issues” of this negotiation. We understand the demand to streamline our works that drives the Presidency and takes shape in the agenda. As we have underlined in the past, these issues are nevertheless closely connected. We can discuss the various options existing on the categories of seats, the size of the new Council, the space for regional representation, and veto power. But in all frankness I find it difficult to identify the ideal solution to any one of these aspects without having clarified all the others at the same time. How can I indicate which and how many seats in a specific category would be advisable to add if we do not know the objective size of the enlarged Council? How can I identify the size and characteristics of regional representation if I do not know what option has been chosen for national seats? How can we discuss working methods if we do not know the prerogatives of new seats, whether they will serve for national or regional representation? And I could add many more examples. What I mean to say is that the Security Council is like a car, a little old maybe but quite complicated. We cannot think of discussing the replacement of one spare part without thinking about how that would affect the other parts and therefore the car’s overall functioning. At the end of the day we have to be sure not only that the car will still work, but that it will work better than ever.
2. List of elements to consider on the categories
 
On these assumptions, I will enter into greater detail on the items that are the object of today’s debate. The elements that have to be negotiated are for the most part well known. Nevertheless they have never been addressed in a genuine intergovernmental negotiation but rather in a working group whose achievements I get the sense some colleagues do not appreciate. This is why the fact that we are now in an informal intergovernmental negotiating session makes it absolutely necessary to identify accurately the perimeters of our talks, basing ourselves obviously on the definitions contained in Decision 62/557. The overarching theme of this first item on the agenda regards the characteristics of the seats that we should establish to assure a Security Council that is adequately representative, accountable, transparent, effective, and geographically balanced. This is an enormous issue, which includes discussions and negotiations, inter alia, on the length of the terms of the new seats. We have proposals for: - seats with non-renewable two-year terms;
- seats with two-year terms that can be renewed once, several times, or without limits;
- seats with defined terms to be assigned to specific categories: based on the size of the State, such as small or small-to-medium, landlocked Countries; States that belong to geopolitical groups such as the Arab League, the Islamic Conference, or Countries that are associated with sub-regional groups, as is the case with GRULAC;
- triennial, quadrennial, or quinquennial seats that may or may not be renewable;
- permanent seats with a limited duration, such as quinquennial seats;
- permanent seats that are unlimited, i.e., “eternal,” in the earthly sense of the word, since not even the most ambitious applicants are still thinking of absolute eternity, beyond the limits of history and time; regional seats of either a limited or permanent duration; among the proposals for permanent seats, there are some – on which there has been particular insistence for years – that regard new “national” permanent seats.
- everything will then have to be examined in a mid-term (the so called “intermediate approach”) or open-ended perspective.
 Further discussions and negotiations will be needed to combine what I mentioned above, inter alia, with: - the relationship between the new seats, be them national or regional, and the question of veto;
- the characteristics of the “longer term seats”, beginning with the modalities and arrangements for re-election, including a specific ownership by regional groups;
- the question of rotation in different categories of seats;
- the relationship with the size of the expansion;  All of the above should finally include a discussion on criteria for membership for different categories. 
  3. Our proposal a) New seats that recognize the regional dimension.  It is essential to introduce regional seats that would allow for a longer and more frequent presence of regional groups in the Security Council. This is particularly true for regional groups that are currently underrepresented, starting with Africa, and without neglecting other regional, sub-regional and interregional realities. They have become crucial actors in international balances, and are in fact already figuring into the current set-up of the Security Council, as evident in the role reserved for a representative of a Country from the Arab Group. The decision on the modalities of election of regional seats should be left to regions, on the fundamental basis of a regional ownership. And I want to stress the great flexibility that we are showing with this proposal for longer term seats, since our starting position was enlargement only to biennial non permanent seats.  i. Africa
 By this logic, we believe that the new Security Council should contain a sufficient number of seats to be assigned primarily to Africa, which is badly underrepresented on the Council, and allow the African Countries to decide the modalities by which these seats will be occupied.  Almost 44% of today’s peacekeeping missions are in Africa. When we factor in history – all UN Mission from 1948 to today – that figure becomes approximately 40%. Even more interesting is a historical analysis. Until 1989 only one mission out of 15 was in Africa. Since 1989, in other words, since the date that UN peacekeeping missions started to increase exponentially, about half have been in Africa. If we add the political missions, that figure becomes almost 55%.  If we wish to weight this data to understand the personnel commitment represented by African missions as a percent of the whole, then we see that 70% of UN personnel on peace or political missions are in Africa: almost 80 thousand out of 114 thousand (based on UN data as of 31 December 2008).  If we focus instead on the Council’s most recent activities, we see that in 2008 almost 46% of formal sessions were dedicated to Africa. Considering the outcome, the statistics for 2008 are as follows: approximately 55% of resolutions approved 52% of PRSTs, and 40% of press statements regarded Africa.  It is our obligation to assure that the Security Council adequately reflects these undeniable realities in which we simply cannot ignore the need for regional balance. Think, for example, of the active and growing involvement of the African Union in many crisis scenarios on the continent.  Italy is following with special attention the process of shaping and consolidating of the structures of the African Union, convinced as we are that only a full African ownership of its own development and security objectives can foster the emergence of shared strategies and effective international partnership. Inspired by this conviction, we have established a special Italian-African Peace Facility, to help contribute to the consolidation of the AU’s operative and logistical capacities, to collaborate in its commitment to the institution building, and to strengthen African early warning, preventive diplomacy, peace-keeping, peace-building, and post-conflict recovery and reconstruction.  Italy is actively engaged in strengthening the EU–Africa dialogue within the framework of the process launched at the Cairo Summit of April 2000 and followed up by the Lisbon Summit of December 2007, with the goal of starting a renewed strategic policy between the two continents.
ii. Asia and GRULAC
 We are proposing that seats with similar characteristics be reserved for Asia, which is the largest regional group, and among the most underrepresented in the Council. A seat for this category should also be reserved to GRULAC, a regional group that contains many sub-regions and organizations representing geopolitical specificities that we cannot ignore. I am thinking, for example, of the high concentration of small States and small island States (among those, there are the numerous Pacific small islands) in both groups. This is why we are proposing additional seats of this type for each of the two regional groups. iii. EU Representation
 My Country has recently concluded, together with four other Countries, a biennium on the Council. As a Country committed to the process of European integration, it has done everything possible to strengthen the uniformity and unity of Europe’s voice in the Council. This is an absolute priority when you consider that Europe as a whole shoulders approximately 40% of the peace-keeping operations budget and 40% of the regular budget.  A reform of the Security Council that strengthens EU representation is supported by the European institutions themselves: the European Parliament has expressed itself along these lines by approving numerous resolutions and decisions in favor of the creation of a common European seat in the Council. The EU Commissioner for External Relations has openly stated her support for an EU seat. This same ambition is strongly shared by public opinion in the EU Countries.  Italy shares this feeling, as a founding Member of the European Union and the depositary of the Treaties that established it. This is a position that my Country has maintained wholeheartedly since 1993, when the Working Group began its deliberations and the then Italian Foreign Minister raised the idea.  Here I wish to recall that, despite the fact that the European Union is a strategic partner of the United Nations in every area, starting with the maintenance of peace and security, it is not entitled, as an entity, to intervene in Security Council meetings except through the voice of Members who happen to be represented on it. In particular, it cannot participate in the consultations, and often not even in public meetings. Some of the most recent cases were the meetings on Kosovo and Georgia – and oftentimes not even in the debates on Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Middle East – all areas in which the EU has important missions on the ground.  During the past biennium, the EU Presidency was able to make a statement to the Security Council only 23 times out of the 201 meetings held in 2007, and only 12 times out of the 243 meetings held in 2008. That means that the EU as such had the opportunity to attend less than 8 % of the Council session while EU member States contribute for 40 % of the UN budget.  A very recent example were last November’s consultations on post-conflict peace-building, which took place behind closed doors, despite the fact that some members of the Council supported extending participation to organizations that were most active in the area, namely the European Union.  Today the European Union has a common foreign and security policy to which it is bound in decisions regarding the maintenance of international peace and security. This is why it should have an appropriate place in the supreme decision-making body on issues of international peace and security.  Some may say that WEOG is already overrepresented in the Security Council. This may be true in numerical terms, but a reform should address the most important political and institutional problem. What we are talking about, in fact, is a form of representation of the regional dimension rather than the promotion of mere national interests. We intend to give recognition to a distinctively new phenomenon in geopolitical reality: the growing, decisive role being played by regional actors. My Country has a clear position in this regard: an additional seat to be shared by the WEOG and Eastern European groups to facilitate a better institutional access of the EU to the Council. iv. Longer Terms.
 An important characteristic that should distinguish the new seats is their duration. We are proposing a category with a longer duration than the biennium currently attributed to non-permanent seats, which will continue to exist. We are open to the modalities by which longer terms could be created: it might consist, for example, in biennial seats with the possibility of up to two more successive terms; or, alternatively, of seats for which a Country would not be immediately re-eligible, that could last, however, for from three to five years. b) Small States.
 
 In the 60-plus years of life of this Organization, 77 Member States have never been elected to a non-permanent seat in the Council. We are talking about 40% of the same Countries that meet in the General Assembly, theoretically, on the basis of a principle of equality. This major under-representation particularly afflicts small States with populations under one million inhabitants. Of the 42 Countries that fit into this category, 37 have never been seated in the Council. I repeat, 37 out of 42. We believe that a concrete response is needed to correct this macroscopic distortion: we propose reserving a new two-years term seat to small States, so that a voice which is equivalent to one-fourth of the membership of the United Nations can finally be constantly heard in the Council. c) Medium-Sized States  The other category undeniably underrepresented concerns medium-sized States with populations of between one and ten million: 71 Member States, representing more than one-third of the membership of the United Nations, 27 of which have never been elected to the Council, and for who we propose the reservation of one non-permanent seat. d) Eastern European group.  An additional two-year term seat should be created for the Countries of the Eastern European group.
4. Limits on permanent national representation  Mr. President, my Government is deeply convinced that an enlargement of the number of seats reserved to "national" permanent members not only is unrealistic in these negotiations and will continue, as happened during the last fifteen years, to be the main stumbling block on the rails of an advanced and effective reform of the Security Council. If the self appointed candidates to permanent seats will not start showing any flexibility, “national” permanent members should be discarded because of what they entail: -severe disruption of extremely important values of the UN Charter, in particular the value of equality among Member States and promotion of democratic principles in the Community of Nations; -lack of accountability towards the membership and the General Assembly; -disregard for the electoral process, the principle of democratic responsibility among Member States, and the institutional  balance among major organs of the UN; -unchecked delegation of sovereign prerogatives of Statehood for unlimited time and purposes, to some individual States, in the fundamental area of maintenance of peace and security; -severe new limitation in regional integration processes, in particular in Europe as far as the European common foreign and security policy is concerned; -creation of unlimited special privileges, de facto and legally, to a very small new group of economically, militarily and politically powerful Member States.  Such a development  in the life of the United Nations could not be called a reform suitable for the future of the international community, more then the affirmation of  logics of national power, influence and, perhaps, regional pre-eminence. a) National permanent candidates do not adequately represent the international community
 There is a point on which the entire General Assembly agrees: we have to make the Security Council more representative. I ask therefore: is there anyone that feels that some Member States are “more representative” than others? Are there sovereign Member States who believe, by some mysterious prerogative, that they can represent other sovereign States through a permanent assignment? I personally have great reservations about this idea and I am convinced that my feelings are quite widespread. In today’s world, the increase in the number of global and regional actors makes even more obsolete the idea of the concert of great powers, the small elite that makes decisions for all the other. On what basis could Country X claim through new seats in the Council to represent other Countries with an assignment that has no time limits? b) Accessibility to the Security Council
 Our goal, inter alia, is to foster the opportunities for every Member State to be seated in the Council at one time or another. Allow me to mention an alarming fact, on which we have the obligation to reflect in these discussions: 77 UN Member States - i.e., 40% - have never been seated once in the Security Council in the 60 years of life of this Organization, whose founding principles include democracy and the sovereign equality of States. Are these 77 States perhaps less equal than others?  The response to this problem – which I do not hesitate to call troubling to the very stability of the United Nations – would certainly not be to expand the Council to include new national permanent seats. Even by a pure mathematical calculation, this would not alter in the least the possibility for the other “mere mortals” to accede to the Council. c) Division of Member States into three hierarchically-ordered classes
 I believe it is important to underline that the proposal to create new permanent seats would, in point of fact, create different classes of UN Member States: a) the P5, who are permanent, have veto power, are legitimate nuclear powers and are not subject to regular elections in the General Assembly; b) the new potential permanents, who would have no veto and would not be subject to elections in the General Assembly; c) the others, who for all intents and purposes would be third-class Countries. Sort of a General Assembly “top, business and economy”, like in an old 747. d) The “cascade effect”
 An important argument against the expansion of the category of permanent members is the so-called cascade effect. This expression refers to the fact that being permanent members of the Security Council carries a special set of privileges. Sometimes they are related to the modalities for election to specific bodies, as is the case with the International Court of Justice. In other cases, it is consolidated practice – which in some circumstances is more reminiscent of a custom – to ensure that citizens of P5 Countries occupy important posts, for example, as USGs in the top departments of the UN system.  Were we to add new national permanent members to the Council, they would ask to enjoy the same privileges. This is true for the main UN bodies, beginning with ECOSOC, Commissions, Funds, Executive Boards, executive bodies of UN Specialized Agencies and so on, where the P5 presently enjoy a privileged status. e) The problem of accountability
 The introduction of new national permanent members would by definition violate the principle of accountability, according to which all Council members except the P5 must be subject to regular scrutiny through elections in the General Assembly. Here I will not go into the question of their status in the aftermath of a world war, when they were required to shoulder heavier responsibilities for the rebuilding of the international community from scratch. Today we are at a completely different historical moment, in which a systematic and periodic review by States of the fundamental principles of the UN Charter is an obligation for all States. Can we even imagine the creation of a new category of States that would enjoy a privileged status that would hold a permanent waiver from any control whatsoever by those who are being asked to recognize that status?  It is undeniable that new permanent members, by the very nature of this type of seat, would end up having the tendency to address the issues on the agenda primarily in light of their own national interests, showing themselves to be less sensitive to the concept of accountability toward the entire membership, which is instead deeply felt by the elected members. Without proper accountability to the General Assembly how could a new national permanent member of the Security Council concretely act on issues or crisis of its direct national interest, knowing that none of its actions may be scrutinized by the General Assembly?  We are discussing how to improve governance, and governance is improved through the central democratic principle of accountability. There is no reason to amplify a privileged status that was created over sixty years ago at a tragic historical moment so radically different from today.
f) Limitation of sovereignty, delegation of power and maintenance of international peace and security.
        From that of “accountability” originates another crucial issue. A State accepts limitations to its sovereignty when it decides to become party to an international organization. This is what happens with the Constitution of the Country I am honoured to represent here: art. 11 of the Italian Constitution states: “Italy (…) agrees to limitations of sovereignty where they are necessary to allow for a legal system of peace and justice between nations, provided the principle of reciprocity is guaranteed; it promotes and encourages international organizations furthering such ends.”  Other Countries have similar constitutional provisions. The acceptance of limitations of State sovereignty impinges upon some of the fundamental prerogatives of States; being a member of an international organization implies the delegation of part of the State power to the organization. This is what the States which adhered to the United Nations decided, taking into account that the UN Charter assigns primary responsibility in the maintenance of international peace and security to a body, the Security Council, whose permanent membership is unequivocally set from the very beginning.  When the Countries we represent here decided to request to become members of the United Nations they knew that the Security Council had primary responsibility and that Article 23 of the Charter indicates its permanent members. The limitations of State sovereignty took place under these specific and firm conditions.  In the event of an enlargement of the national permanent membership of the Council also the limitations of sovereignty and the consequences deriving thereof would change. g) Criteria on permanent membership.
 And I’ll ask one final and simple question before concluding; a question that I address above all to the distinguished colleagues that represent the aspirant permanent members. Mr. President, distinguished colleagues, when a Country aspires to a unique status in this Organization of equals, I immediately think that this Country must have very good reasons to explain such a request to all other Member States. So, my question is the following: is there any criteria, I mean objective criteria, any objective basis which can allow the identification of nations that, more than others, are entitled to become permanent members of the Security Council?  
5. Conclusion  In 1945, when necessity for humanity required the creation of the UN Security Council on the basis of five permanent seats, the world had no choice. Fifty million dead, six million victims of the Shoah, entire continents that had lost their economic production capacities, fortunes annihilated, un-healable wounds to human dignity: these required the leadership of some great Countries in the work of reconstruction, for the sake of world stability. Today the international community has not only the possibility but also the obligation to choose a model of governance inclusive and with shared responsibilities. This is before the eyes of all: in the 21st-century world, a new small elite would never be able to fulfill this responsibility.   “If we fail to use [the Charter] we shall betray all those who have died so that we might meet here in freedom and safety to create it. If we seek to use it selfishly – for the advantage of any one nation or any small group of nations – we shall be equally guilty of that betrayal.”  These words, Mr. President, are not mine. They were pronounced by the President of the United States, Harry Truman, to the San Francisco Conference that witnessed the birth of this extraordinary Organization, unprecedented in human history. It is with these words that I wish to conclude my statement. With an appeal not to look for egotistic solutions, dictated by national interests, and to search together on a shared path, in the spirit of this Organization. An Organization founded on the sacred principles of the sovereign equality of all its Member States.