The Italian Contribution to the Reform of the United Nations - Presentation of the book "Italy at the United Nations: When Diplomacy Works as a Team."
Remarks by Ambassador Francesco Paolo Fulci, former Permanent Representative of Italy to the United Nations (The Casa Italiana Zerili-Marimò of New York University,
November 21, 2008)  
Excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, I wish to begin this short presentation by expressing my warmest and most sincere appreciation to Mariuccia Zerilli-Marimò, the founder, mover and doer of the Casa Italiana of New York University. I also wish to thank the Director of the Casa, Stefano Albertini, and his staff. And an NYU alumnus, Michael Moore, for the professionalism and loyalty with which he assisted me in the preparation of the many speeches I gave at the United Nations as the Ambassador of Italy between 1993 and 1999. My thanks also go to former congressman Frank J. Guarini, the sponsor of this event, and to my fellow panelists, Judge Dominic Massaro, Alessandra Baldini, and Arturo Zampaglione, who have honored me with their friendship for so many years.  Let me also thank the members of my “dream team” who are here tonight. In the 1990s, they were the backbone of the Italian Mission in New York. Today some of them have the good fortune to represent Italy on American soil once again. And in positions of greater responsibility. I am referring, of course, to our new Ambassador to the UN, Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata, for whom I feel a most affectionate friendship and esteem. With Giulio I have enjoyed a close and long-standing collaboration not only at the UN, where he was my brilliant deputy, but also at the NATO Mission in Brussels, and, even before that, at the Italian Embassy in Canada.  Sebastiano Cardi, now Deputy Ambassador to Washington, who back then was the formidable liaison with the media and the whole UN press corps, in addition to being an able drafter of Security Council resolutions.  Francesco Maria Talò, the Consul General of Italy today. Although he arrived toward the end of my mandate, he immediately stood out for his ability and commitment to teamwork.  Gian Lorenzo Cornado, who has just been appointed Minister Counsellor to our Mission at the UN, who it was my good luck to have as my trustworthy and tireless Chief of Staff.  Gian Luigi Valenza, currently a member of the International Civil Service Commission, and at the time the winner of two hotly-contested elections to the Administrative and Budgetary Committee of the United Nations.  Last but not least, Sandro Tolentino, my guardian angel for ten years, whose presence here today shows what a faithful and loyal Carabiniere he is.  The 1993-1999 period was a time of peak activity for Italian diplomacy at the UN. The results speak for themselves: a) Italy was elected to the Security Council for the 1995-1996 biennium, by a margin of four more votes than Germany. During its term Italy held the Council presidency twice, including the crucial month when Kofi Annan was named Secretary-General;
b) Italy participated in 28 competitive elections at the UN, emerging victorious every single time, with a sole exception, when we lost by one vote. Never before had Italy been so fully represented in the UN Commissions, Committees, and Programs.
c) For the first time ever, the Permanent Representative of Italy was unanimously elected to be President of the Economic and Social Council for the year 1999.
d) Italy, which was one of the four founders of the Coffee Club, made a substantial contribution to preparing the famous procedural resolution, approved by the General Assembly in November 1998, that continues to block the aspirations of pretenders to new permanent seats. What was the secret of this success? The answer is contained in the collection of fourteen essays, Italy at the UN 1993-1999: When Diplomacy Works as a Team, written ten years later by the protagonists of that adventure. These essays are for the most part anecdotal, making them easy reading. They tell the when, how and why of these successes, the obstacles met, and the methods used to overcome them. As I wrote in the book, on the basis of my experience, I believe that the secret of success in multilateral diplomacy lies in four factors: - First, razor-sharp ideas and objectives to be achieved through imagination, pragmatism and courage;
- Second, a strong, highly-qualified and close-knit team with no room for slackers, gossips, skeptics, and worst of all, cynics;
- Third, solid constant contacts with other Missions, especially of the smaller and poorer Countries. To win battles – including diplomatic battles – one needs allies. The achievements of the Coffee Club – now known as Uniting for Consensus – are an illuminating example;
- Lastly, you need to win the understanding, liking and support of the political world, the media, national and even international public opinion. In those years one of the top questions on the United Nations agenda was the enlargement of the Security Council. On this issue I had the privilege to speak, exactly two years ago, here at the Casa Italiana, together with my dear old friend, Ambassador Kamal, former Ambassador of Pakistan to the UN, and the American political scientist Jeff Laurenti of the Century Foundation. To begin with, it would be useful to remember that after their defeat in the second world war, Germany, Japan, and Italy were excluded from the new UN Security Council, which replaced the previous Council of the League of Nations, on which all three countries had been seated. But as the old saying goes, “To the victor go the spoils,” so permanent membership on the new Council – with the added bonus of veto power – was awarded to the United States, the Soviet Union, China, Great Britain, and, in extremis, France (although it had not won the war, France was allowed in at Churchill’s insistence). This situation would remain unchanged for fifty years. But in 1993 Germany and Japan decided to throw their hats in the ring. They said that, since the war was long over, they were ready to become permanent members, too. To which I immediately replied, “You may be ready. We are not. Do you want to become permanent members because you lost the war? In that case remember that Italy also lost the war with you!” It did not take long for my remarks to make the rounds of the UN. Following in the footsteps of Germany and Japan, three other countries – India, Brazil, and Nigeria – requested to become permanent members, too. At the Italian Mission, we immediately realized that if these demands were met, the result would be devastating: - For the UN, which would suffer a further loss of democracy by adding five more permanent members to the Council. Although the new arrivals would probably not be given the veto, they would no longer have to stand for democratic elections and would thus no longer be accountable to anyone, except to themselves;
- For the European Union, which would lose the possibility of creating a common European seat in the Security Council, with the risk of a return to the gloomy national fortresses of the past, and all the disastrous consequences that would ensue;
- For Italy, which would be irremediably marginalized and demoted. We would have found ourselves in the unhappy position of seeing the door of the Security Council shut in our face. Such a demotion would have meant that on vital issues of war and peace – even issues directly concerning us – others would be deciding for us but without us. The irony is that this demotion would have come right when Italy was the fifth top contributor to the regular budget of the UN and the third or fourth top provider of troops to peace-keeping operations. Soon we discovered that other countries had similar misgivings and concerns. We also found ourselves facing the hostility of a President of the General Assembly who had openly sided with the self-appointed candidates to permanent seats. Right then and there, Italy, Egypt, Mexico, and Pakistan mobilized a group of some fifty countries called the “Coffee Club,” because we met every Monday morning at coffee time. Our goal was to put a halt to the ambitions of the “Great Pretenders” – as we jokingly called them after the famous song by the Platters – and fight for a more egalitarian and democratic reform with the participation of all and the exclusion of none. Let me be clear. The true problem with expanding the Council is not whether to increase the number of permanent members. The biggest problem is what happens next: who should receive the inordinate privilege of forgoing democratic elections forever. India? Then Pakistan would strongly object, as would many of the other 52 members of the Islamic Conference. Brazil? Try running that by Argentina, Mexico, Colombia and other Latin American Countries, whose language, on top of everything else, is Spanish, not Portuguese. South Africa or Nigeria? Can you imagine the reactions of the Arab Countries of North Africa, not to mention the African Francophone countries? Germany? Well, in addition to downgrading countries of the Western Group like Italy, Spain, and Canada, it would destroy the dream of a common European seat and be a major set-back for European integration. Japan? Another great Asian power, China, is energetically opposed to this idea. Japan, it is true, continues to enjoy the support of the USA. But who in the world could think that the General Assembly – two-thirds of whose members are developing countries – would give a free pass only to Japan, as America has seemed to suggest? Another country from the northern hemisphere of the planet in a permanent club, a club that does not have a single member from the southern hemisphere, could never be accepted by the General Assembly, where third world countries prevail! It is precisely this tangle of contradictory interests and intersecting vetoes that has produced a stalemate in the last fourteen years. In my modest opinion, the stalemate is going to last longer, much longer, despite aggressive new efforts by the great pretenders, who continue the pursuit of their chimera. There is yet another roadblock that appears to be practically insurmountable. All five permanent members, the beati possidentes, seem in their hearts to have decided to stay five. Even when some of their leaders support the great pretenders in public, the impression is that they are only paying lip service. On top of everything else, the P-5 have the power to block their aspirations thanks to article 108 of the UN Charter. This article states that no amendment can be made to the Charter, and therefore to the bodies that it governs, including the Security Council, unless it is ratified by all five permanent members. In 1994 a four-year period began of formal and informal meetings, tête-à-têtes (confessionals), and clashes that often got out of hand and became very undiplomatic. There were proposals and counterproposals, skirmishes and battles in the Working Group and in the General Assembly, spiced with pressures of every type and kind. Everything came to a head in fall 1998, when the Coffee Club succeeded in getting the General Assembly to approve a fundamental procedural motion. This motion establishes, loud and clear, that no documents, resolutions or decisions pertaining to Security Council reform can be adopted, at any stage of the process, without the affirmative vote of two-thirds of the general membership, as provided for by article 108 of the Charter: and not two-thirds of those present and voting, as the great pretenders had hoped. Italy and its Coffee Club allies thus built a procedural firewall that has withstood repeated attempts by Japan, Germany, Brazil, and India (now self-styled as the G-4) to force the situation. Coming to more recent developments, until today, the issue has always been debated within the open-ended working group, which operates on the basis of consensus. But this past September, on the very last day of the previous General Assembly, the G-4 was able to push the debate into intergovernmental negotiations. They did so in a typically high-handed fashion, and with the open support of the then President of the Assembly, who proved to be anything but impartial. By this maneuver, they shifted the question over to the General Assembly, where the rule of consensus does not apply, and which should begin to take up Security Council reform by next February. As I am sure everyone can imagine, this is bound to generate a highly divisive, controversial and bitter debate within the Assembly, in addition to wasting everyone’s time with interminable and acrimonious discussions. One can easily predict the tense and heated atmosphere in which they will take place. There is another twist to the story. The recent meeting in Washington of the G20 has led many to think that it could be the model for the next Security Council. This might seem like a simple and appealing solution. In fact, it has little to no possibility of becoming a reality. The two pillars for any reform of the Security Council are equitable geographic representation and effective decision making. Let us imagine, for a second, a future Security Council consisting of all 21 countries present last week in Washington: only three of them are from the so-called third world: one African (South Africa) and two Asians (India and Indonesia). Can anyone seriously believe that the third world countries, which constitute a broad majority at the UN, would ever vote in favor of perpetuating their current underrepresentation on the UN’s supreme decision-making body? The developing countries would obviously demand that this imbalance be corrected, by admitting more of them to the Council. Ultimately the Security Council would turn into a mini-General Assembly that would be difficult to govern. It would also be hostage to opposing positions that would end up paralyzing its activity, especially during the most crucial crises. Can anyone seriously believe that such a solution would lead to effective decision making? If any of you were to ask my forecast for the future, I would give the same opinion I gave in this very room two years ago. There is a time-honoured position, adopted in 1993 by the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) – which numbers 118 members. Their position is that should an increase in permanent seats prove unattainable, then it would be preferable, for the time being, to increase only non-permanent seats. Of course, in order to do so, some of the leading non-aligned countries – India, Nigeria, and South Africa – would have to relinquish their goal of a permanent seat. They would at long last have to realize that, “ad impossibilia nemo tenetur” – that is to say, no one is bound to the impossible – and shift therefore to the NAM fall-back position. The votes are already there for a moderate increase of non-permanent seats for developing countries, exactly like in 1965, when four non-permanent seats were added to the Council, and allocated to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The expansion should be accompanied by the repeal of the existing non-immediate re-election clause. This would allow member States that make more substantial contributions to the UN to sit more frequently on the Council, but always democratically elected by, and accountable to, the General Assembly. At this point I would like to set the record straight on a commonplace that was already around in my time at the UN, and that I understand is circulating again today. Namely, that the failure to reform the Security Council should be blamed on the obstinate resistance of a group of countries known as Uniting for Consensus, the heirs to the Coffee Club. What a paradoxical notion. The true saboteurs of the reform are, instead, those who insist on obtaining positions of privilege: the G-4, who want to become more equal than others, in contempt for the principle of sovereign equality. The blame for the stalemate certainly does not belong to those who defend adamantly the principles solemnly proclaimed by the Charter. It lies squarely on the shoulders of those who persist in trying to violate these principles. In this regard I fully share the view of the authors of a recent Hammarskjold Foundation publication on the prospects of the S.C. reform, who wrote “The future of the U.N. depends on its democratization and the higher degree of meaningful participatory influence of all Members States, irrespective of their size or power, and thereby the body’s ability to represent the interests of the majority of people in this world.” In New York, Brussels, and elsewhere, there is often talk of the possibility, indeed the advisability, of a common European seat in the UN Security Council. The idea has been advocated openly by Javier Solana, High Representative for the European Common Foreign and Security Policy, and Benita Ferrero Waldner, the European Commissioner in Brussels for External Relations and previously a senior official at the U.N. Secretariat here in New York. For its part, the European Parliament has almost unanimously adopted a report stating that Security Council reform, “should better reflect the current situation in the world including the European Union as a permanent member, as soon as its legal personality is recognized, as well as a supplementary seat for each of the following regions: Africa, Asia and Latin America.” But here’s the dilemma. The idea of a common European seat does not meet the favour of France and Great Britain. Evidently they fear that the common European seat would undermine their own positions of privilege. Hence their support for Germany, whose aspirations, if fulfilled, would safeguard their own anachronistic privileges for decades to come. Should the European Union resign itself to this situation? I personally do not think so. The unified Europe was created gradually, step by step. A common European seat should be created the same way. Let me draw your attention to an interesting fact. The European Council already speaks with a single voice in the Security Council, through the representative of the rotating Presidency – but only in the public meetings. It is totally absent in the place that really matters, the little room off to the side, where 90% of the work is done and all crucial decisions are made. The sancta sanctorum, where there is a strictly-applied policy of admitting only three members from each of the 15 delegations on the Council. To avoid amendments to the Charter or to the Council’s rules of procedure, a good starting point could be to assure that one representative of the EU presidency and one representative of the Commissioner for the Common Foreign and Security Policy be inserted into the delegations of one of the permanent or non-permanent European members of the Council. One could even envision these two representatives being rotated between European delegations. This would allow both European officials to be direct witnesses to the decision-making process inside the Council, which would make the coordination and definition of the common European positions much easier. This could be the first step. The next would be to allow one of the two officials who sit directly behind the “host” Ambassador to take the microphone. At that moment, he or she would speak on behalf of Europe, and thus bring Europe’s voice into the inner chamber of the Council. Obviously we would have to devise and agree on a mechanism for doing this with our European partners. A similar mechanism already exists inside the Council. Argentina and Brazil have agreed to insert a senior diplomat into each other’s delegation when one of them is seated in the Council. If we want to succeed, it will take vision and audacity, for the good of the United Nations, for the good of Europe, for the good of Italy. To conclude, someone in the audience might wonder, “Nine years later, what advice would you give to your brilliant former deputy and now your successor, Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata? My honest answer is, there is no need for advice. Giulio is a true ace, a great asset of Italian diplomacy. He has already shown this many times, as Ambassador to Israel, as Director General of Political Affairs, as Deputy Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But what matters the most for the United Nations is that with his deep experience and sure knowledge of the mood, procedures, mechanisms and intricacies of the UN, he truly has an extra gear. Perhaps if he could accept one word of wisdom, I would simply remind him of a saying by Winston Churchill. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.”