India’s UN envoy meeting Security Council, General Assembly heads on ICJ election

By Arul Louis

United Nations, Nov 20 (IANS) India's Permanent Representative Syed Akbaruddin on Monday morning met presidents of the Security Council, Sebastiano Cardi, and the General Assembly, Miroslav Lajcak, ahead of the deadlocked world court election scheduled for later in the day, Lajcak's Spokesperson Brenden Varma said.

They also met British Permanent Representative Matthew Rycroft, whose candidate Christopher Greenwood is facing India's Dalveer Bhandari.

A third election meeting was to take place simultaneously in both the Council and the Assembly at 3 p.m local time on Monday (1:30 a.m Indian Standard Time on Tuesday).

Varma said: "The purpose of the meeting is to discuss the conduct of election."

Sitting judges Bhandari and Greenwood have been through 11 rounds of voting in the Assembly and 10 in the Council but neither has been able to get a majority in both chambers, which is required for re-election to the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Bhandari, with 121 votes in the last balloting in the Assembly has an almost two-thirds majority in the body, while Greenwood has nine votes in the 15-member Council, which is enough to block the Indian candidate.

According to the statutes of the ICJ, if the deadlock continues after rounds of voting in the third election meeting, a joint conference made up of three representatives each from the Council and the Assembly can by a majority select a candidate.

India is opposed to a joint conference and has asked the UN member nations to follow democratic principles and re-elect Bhandari by accepting the world-wide majority backing he has received in the Assembly.

Akbaruddin on Thursday called the joint conference a "can of worms" that would challenge the will of the UN majority.

"The precedent is clear," he said. "As is expected in the 21st century, the candidate who enjoys overwhelming support of the General Assembly membership can be the only legitimate candidate to go through."

In previous cases of a deadlock between the Council and the Assembly, the choice of Assembly always prevailed.

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)

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