There has been a lot of criticism iof the UN in recent times. This article is a reminder that it is still essentially controlled by the five powers with the right to veto. The Un itself is seeking to bring some changes, tho not to the right of these five countries to veto.

U.N. Tackles Issue of Imbalance of Power; By WARREN HOGE; NY Times; November 28, 2004

UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 26 - No institutional concern at the United Nations has been studied more with less to show for it than the need to broaden the membership of the 15-nation Security Council to reflect the world of today rather than the one that existed at the Council's inception nearly 60 years ago. The Security Council is action central at the United Nations, the one body that can pass resolutions binding on all 191 members and cut through the delay and obfuscation that can thwart decision-making elsewhere in the ranks.

Yet its composition is indisputably out of date. Its definitive authority - the right to cast a veto - is in the hands of the post-World War II powers of the United States, Britain, France and Russia, as well as China, and out of reach for countries like Brazil, Germany, India and Japan, which have gained economic and regional prominence since 1945. The United Nations recognizes the need of such reform, but it has considered the possibility of ever coming to terms with the issue so remote that it assigned it to a panel called the Open-Ended Working Group, long derided at headquarters as the "never ending" committee.

Now the subject is about to get high profile attention when a panel of 16 international figures commissioned by Secretary General Kofi Annan publishes its recommendations on Thursday on how to update the United Nations to face such 21st-century challenges as terror, failed states, nuclear proliferation, poverty, environmental decay and mass violence and genocide. Speaking after a year in which the United Nations and its most powerful constituent, the United States, had fallen into disagreement over Iraq, Mr. Annan announced the establishment of the panel in a speech to the General Assembly on Sept. 23, 2003. "We have reached a fork in the road," he said. "This may be a moment no less decisive than 1945 itself, when the U.N. was founded."

While the 60-page report will address critical issues like amending the charter to permit some uses of pre-emptive force as legitimate acts of self-defense or seeking a definition of terrorist acts that would not allow people to class them as acts of resistance, its section on Security Council reform will be avidly consulted inside the United Nations. According to diplomats who have seen it, the report recommends expanding the panel to 24 members with 6 each from the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe under 2 alternative formulas. The present makeup is 5 permanent veto-bearing members and 10 other countries, elected in annual blocks of 5, which serve two- year terms.

One of the two suggested options would create a new tier of eight semi-permanent members with renewable four-year terms and one additional conventional two-year term member. The other would expand the number of permanent members to 11 from 5 and the number of those elected to two-year terms by 3. Neither option, however, extends granting veto power beyond the existing five countries - a point that is sure to sharpen the debate in the General Assembly, which seems certain to continue into next summer.

Changes in the composition of the Security Council must be approved by two-thirds of the 191 United Nations members and ratified by the legislatures of two-thirds of those governments, including those of all five permanent Council members. The Council was last expanded, to 15 from 11, in a 1963 General Assembly vote that took effect in 1965. In 1971, Communist China took over the permanent seat on the Council that had been occupied by the Nationalist Chinese.