UNITED NATIONS – Greece was elected a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council here on Friday after receiving 187 votes out of a total of 189 members which participated in the UN General Assembly’s vote. Greece will be a non-permanent member as of January 1, 2005, and for a period of two years. Denmark received 181 votes.

Greece’s permnent representative at the UN, Ambassador Adamantios Vassilakis, made the following statement immediately after the vote was held:
“The General Assembly elected the five new non-permanent members of the Security Council for the 2005-2006 two-year period this morning. It is a special joy for me to be announcing to you that our country is also among the new five members, which received 187 votes out of a total of 189 which voted. I have already briefed Foreign Minister Mr. (Petros) Molyviatis on the results. The other countries which were elected today are Denmark, Japan, Argentina and Tanzania.

“After 1952-53, Greece will be participating again in the Security Council. I am convinced that it will contribute effectively to its mission in maintaining peace and security in the world. You will find more in the government announcement which will be issued in Athens.

“I would like to express my thanks to the political and service leadership of the foreign ministry for its trust and support for all our efforts here, as well as to my colleagues and associates who contributed to this effort in New York, Athens and in all the countries where Greece has diplomatic missions.”

FM MOLYVIATIS
The Greek government expressed its great satisfaction over the announcement of results of voting at the UN’s General Assembly, while Foreign Minister Petros Molyviatis said the election was “a special honour for the country.”

Molyviatis said Greece’s election to the Security Council for the first time in the past 52 years was “a special honour for our country and confirms the prestige Greece has abroad and the confidence with which it is entrusted by the international community.”

The foreign minister further said “the effort for our election was begun by the previous government and was completed by the present government”, adding that “our country benefits when its foreign policy is implemented with consensus and consistency.”

Molyviatis went on to say that “throughout the entire duration of our two-year participation in the Security Council we shall be guided by the basic principles of our foreign policy:adherence to peace, respect for international legality, democracy and human rights and the strengthening of international cooperation between all the peoples of the world.”

He stressed that there shall be “close cooperation with the other members of the Security Council and, with respect for international law and international legality, we shall focus our attention and our efforts on regions of instability but, of course, on our wider region as well for which our country’s particular interest is self-evident. Our resolve is to contribute with all our strength to the further strengthening of the UN’s role as a defender of international legality and of peaceful coexistence and cooperation among peoples.”

This will be Greece’s second tenure as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council after the 1952-1953 period. The criteria for the election of a country to such a post concern its contribution to world peace and stability and its participation in other activities of the Organisation, as well as the equal geographical representation of member-states in the Council.

Greece will be assuming the Security Council’s presidency twice during this two-year period and for a duration of one month each time. It is also noteworthy that Turkey has tabled its candidacy for a similar position during the 2008-2009 period.

PASOK
The main opposition Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) on Friday evening hailed Greece’s election as non-permanent member of the UN Security Council earlier in the day.

”Today’s decision by the UN General Assembly for the election of Greece as a non-permanent member of the Security Council for the period 2005-2006 has its own particular and self-evident importance,” the party’s spokesman, Nikos Athanassakis, said in a statement.

”This positive development does not constitute the conclusion of an internal formal UN procedure. On the contrary, it is the result of a long-term diplomatic campaign, of intense mobility, planning, consultations and alliances of the PASOK government, of (former) prime minister Costas Simitis and of (former) foreign minister George Papandreou, in the past years, culminating in the unanimous decision of the states which participate in the so-called ‘Western Group’, on August 26, 2003,” Athanassakis added.

”The international community and the United Nations are facing ‘open wounds’ which negatively affect peace, security, stability and development. The ongoing impasse in Iraq, the Middle East crisis and the Palestinian issue, the Cyprus issue, developments in Afghanistan and the broader region of the Caucasus, the conflicts in Africa, international terrorism, poverty and the widening of inequalities, human rights conditions, the weapons of mass destruction will be at the centre of international interest and in the daily UN agenda,” he said before concluding that Greece’s participation should be utilised and not become ”a parenthesis of a simple bureaucratic dispatch.”