Foreign

Home page

Foreign

Ariel Cohen: Azerbaijan has a good chance against Hungary to be a member of the UN Security Council

21 October 2011 11:49 (UTC +04:00)

Washington. Isabel Levine â€“ APA. â€œIt is a complicated diplomatic dance that leads to a vote for a country’s membership in the UN Security Council. Azerbaijan has a good chance against Hungary as a large number of European Union countries already occupied this seatâ€, he told APAâ€™s US correspondent.

â€œIn addition, Russia and other former Soviet countries will support it [Azerbaijan]. So will the majority of Organization of Islamic Conference members, of which Azerbaijan is an active participantâ€, he said

According to the analyst, it is important that a culturally Muslim, tolerant, pluralistic country which has excellent relations from the Pacific to both sides of the Atlantic will be a member of UNSC for the first time in its history.

â€œAzerbaijan’s efforts to secure a seat on the UN SC is an interesting (and logical) extension of its aggressive diplomatic outreach program undertaken over the past few yearsâ€, Thomas Goltz, the author of Azerbaijan Diary and other books, who also teaches at the political science department at Montana State University in Bozeman, told APAâ€™s Washington DC correspondent.

The analyst reminded Azerbaijanâ€™s hosting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (and the virtual take-over of the OIC Youth wing) in order to secure support from the Muslim world, hosting diverse international conferences on a wide variety of subjects (Communications, International Women’s Dialogue, etc) as well as organizing ’Visit Azerbaijan’ for specific groups of smaller-country diplomats based at the UN in New York.

â€œLast June I was asked to address a group of some 40 ’Caribbean’ countries (Jamaica, Nicaragua, Columbia, etc) at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy; another group from ’African Nations’ was due to make a study visit in late July. Perhaps there have been more. Clearly, the aim of organizing such visits is to secure the sympathy of those delegations at the UN General Assembly for causes Azerbaijan holds dear--especially Karabakh/Qarabaghâ€, Mr. Goltz said.

â€œWhether this new sympathy translates itself into the rotating seat on the UN SC this time around is another question, as I am certain that the other candidate countries have also been working the back halls of international diplomacy themselvesâ€, he added.

According to the UN News Center, Member States will meet in the General Assembly today morning at 10 am EST, to elect the Council members by secret ballot, with winning candidates needing two thirds of those countries present and voting.

Balloting will continue until enough candidates reach that threshold, even if only one country is competing for a seat in a particular region.

Besides Azerbaijan, the candidates included Hungary and Slovenia (from the Eastern European States); Kyrgyzstan, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan and Togo (from the African and Asia-Pacific States); and Guatemala (from the Latin American and Caribbean States). All except Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan and Guatemala had previously served on the Council.

According to Article 23 of the Charter, outgoing non-permanent Council members could not be re-elected immediately.