Biden’s Farewell Meeting at the Quad

“We will reform the UN Security Council, recognizing the urgent need to make it more representative, inclusive, transparent, effective, democratic and accountable by expanding both the permanent and non-permanent categories of membership,” the leaders’ joint statement said.

The leaders stressed that the expansion of permanent seats should include representation of new countries from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean on the reformed Security Council.

It is worth noting that the United States used its veto power 5 times regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and prevented the UN Security Council from stopping the war on Gaza on more than one occasion.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has previously said that reform of the UN Security Council should begin with a permanent seat for Africa.

It is noteworthy that the Security Council is the permanent structure of the United Nations, entrusted with the primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security. The Council includes 15 countries: five permanent members “Russia, the United States of America, Britain, China and France” who have the right to veto, and 10 temporary members who are elected for a period of two years.

Japan, Ecuador, Switzerland, Mozambique and Malta were elected for 2023 and 2024, and Slovenia, Algeria, Sierra Leone, South Korea and Guyana for 2024-2025.

The Quad meeting is a “farewell” to President Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida after both said they would not seek re-election: the former as US president, and the latter as head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and prime minister of Japan.

The Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue) format was launched in 2007 by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as an informal consultative mechanism for four countries that share the “values” of a free and open Indo-Pacific.

While Japan and Australia are US allies, India, which has no allied relations with Washington, was included in the “four” largely because of its growing role in the Indo-Pacific region and confrontation with China.

Source: Novosti