UNITED NATIONS, December 30. /TASS/. Any reform of the United Nations Security Council requires the consensus of the international community, Russian First Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Dmitry Polyansky said on Friday.
"The Security Council should reflect the current world order, it should include developing states. The problem is that there is no consensus in the international community on how to conduct this reform, who these states should be and whether they should be permanent members, <…> there is no such consensus and it cannot yet be reached, and until it is reached, <…> Security Council reform will not move forward," he said during a live broadcast on his Telegram channel.
According to Polyansky, the UN Security Council’s possible expansion should not interfere with its functionality. "Today, it has 15 members and we spend three to four hours discussing this or that issue. If, say, this number is doubled. You can imagine what will become of our work. Naturally, it will not make decision-making more efficient," he said. "That is why we think that slightly more than 20 is the optimal number of Security Council members, maybe 21 or 22-23, but 25 will be too many."
President of the 77th UN General Assembly Csaba Korosi said earlier that he stood for reforming the UN Security Council to make it more representative and effective. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, however, said that the UN Security Council should not be expanded by means of including Western nations but rather representatives from Asian, African and Latin American countries.