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Australia backs bid for permanent UN seat
Australia wants to engage more with the Asia Pacific countries and will push for India and Japan to become permanent members in a reformed UN Security Council, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith has said.
- IANS
- Published: 00:21 February 11, 2008
Sydney: Australia wants to engage more with the Asia Pacific countries and will push for India and Japan to become permanent members in a reformed UN Security Council, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith has said.
In an interview to Jim Middleton on ABC Television's Asia Pacific Focus programme, Smith said: "We need to be engaged much more in the UN and we also believe that UN should take much more of a central role in international affairs.
"We have a strong view that there should be, for example, Security Council reform of the UN, that the Security Council should reflect the modern world, which is why we've suggested for example that both India and Japan should become permanent members of a reformed UN Security Council."
In a major break from the decade-long former John Howard-led government's foreign policy approach, Smith said: "We very strongly believe that Australia needs to take much more of a multilateral approach."
Fundamental alliance
Underlying his government's priorities, the minister said: "Our fundamental alliance relationship [is] with the US, our view [is] that we need to engage more in the UN and that UN needs to take a more central focus in international affairs, and thirdly our very strong view [is] that our engagement in the Asia Pacific has to be very robust."
The new Australian government would also like to "play a greater role on disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation issues and see much more activity in that internationally".
The Kevin Rudd-led Labor government has enthused a breath of fresh air in the foreign policy. Smith, in the past two weeks, has met some of Australia's most important allies, visiting the US and Japan and hosting the foreign ministers of China and Indonesia.
However, Smith made it clear to Japan and to the visiting Chinese foreign minister that Australia wants to proceed with the trilateral security dialogue between Japan, Australia and the US but it didn't want to take part in the one off, four-way dialogue between Australia, Japan, the US and India.
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