OPEN-ENDED WORKING GROUP ON THE QUESTION OF
EQUITABLE REPRESENTATION ON AND INCREASE IN
THE MEMBERSHIP OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL
AND OTHER MATTERS RELATED TO THE SECURITY COUNCIL

DECISION-MAKING PROCESS IN THE
SECURITY COUNCIL, INCLUDING THE VETO

STATEMENT
BY

H. E. Mr. ANDRÉ ERDÕS
PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE
OF THE REPUBLIC OF HUNGARY
TO THE UNITED NATIONS

NEW YORK, APRIL 28, 1998

Mr. President,

        At the risk of repeating somewhat what other delegations have already said in this Working Group, but believing in the usefulness and desirability of a democratic debate around the questions related to the reform of the Security Council, let me share with you, Mr. President, 9 points.

1.     The historical retrospectives that have been presented to this Working Group reminded us of the unique circumstances in which the United Nations had been established and in which the decision-making mechanism of the Security Council had been laid down. At this point in time, however, we would stress the need for realism and a forward-oriented pragmatic approach to these questions. Whatever the original intentions of the proponents of the veto right had been, this right had, in fact, contributed to a balance of power to save the world from nuclear disaster in the long and tense period of the ideological, political and military confrontation between East and West.

2.     Today, a radically improved public record of the Security Council in terms of the frequency of the application of the veto right is there for everybody to see. We believe that the present international conditions do provide us with much better perspectives in debating the advantages and disadvantages of the veto.

3.     It should not be lost on anyone that the attachment of the present permanent members of the Security Council to their veto rights continues to be unquestionable and that, therefore, the outright elimination of these rights does not appear to be in the realm of feasible possibilities.

4.     At the same time, curtailing a too liberal application of this right seems to be a distinct and reachable possibility. If we are successful in making progress in this regard, we will be able, by the same token, to ease the many negative connotations that had been linked to the application of the right of veto.

5.     Updating the list of decisions deemed procedural and providing guidance as to what constitutes a matter of procedural nature would be most helpful. In so doing, we anticipate a widening of the scope of such matters. To proceed to this end, we can fix the new framework in a separate document or we can revise the relevant articles of the Charter itself. Our delegation has an open mind on this issue, but it seems to us at the present stage of our discussions that it would be easier and more pragmatic to opt for the first course of action.

6.     We share the views of the many delegations which spoke before us and which advocated voluntarily assumed commitments by the permanent members of the Security Council to limit the veto to questions related to Chapter VII of the Charter.

7.     Both present and future permanent members should individually commit themselves to seek to avoid the application of the veto right and to exercise it only in exceptional circumstances. In such a context when all efforts are made to find agreement among the permanent members, it is fair to expect that an explanation be given by the permanent member or members concerned of the reasons for casting the veto. Obviously, it is not so much such an explanation rather than a commitment to seek to avoid the application of the veto that would act as a kind of political deterrent to the unrestricted use of the veto.

8.     The debate in our Working Group should not be jeopardized by self-imposed limitations to what is only feasible today. Our sense of realism does not preclude our anticipation of taking a hard look at the Charter language itself where a number of stipulations, related both to decision-making in the Security Council and to other issues as well, need to be updated and which, in our mind, makes revisiting those stipulations sooner or later inevitable.

9.     In our revisiting the Charter, the possibility will be there to put the right of veto in its place, to regularize it in a way, in a word, to institutionalize the concept of the veto as part of the decision-making mechanism of the Security Council, with all its specific criteria.