French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Friday his country and Britain would push next month for an interim reform of the UN Security Council. Sarkozy said the United Nations General Assembly was due next month to examine the long-stalled issue of reforming the world's top security body whose composition largely reflects the balance of power shortly after World War Two.
"With the United Kingdom, France will plead for an interim solution which in my the only one capable of unblocking this issue which is not only not moving forward but is moving backwards," Sarkozy said in a speech to foreign diplomats. The Council currently has five permanent members - the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China.
Sarkozy said the permanent members of the Council should include an African and Latin American state and India, adding the membership of Germany and Japan could be discussed, and that a temporary reform would make it possible to test options.
"It does not seem very reasonable to me either that there is not a single Arab country that is a permanent member of this body," said Sarkozy, who had a private dinner with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in Paris on Wednesday.
Sarkozy also repeated his call for the Group of Eight industrialised nations (G8) to be expanded to include emerging states such as China and India. In a wide-ranging speech, Sarkozy touched on many sensitive issues but largely maintained an unusually diplomatic tone. He said it was in the world's interest to regulate the price of commodities including oil, adding that rich countries should work to ensure "acceptable" prices for producers.
"Let us seize this moment to hold out a hand to oil producing countries, while the price of a barrel of Brent is at $45 to tell them that we developed countries agree to see with them, the producer countries, how to guarantee them an acceptable average oil price level," he said.