Pressing ahead with his proposal to enlarge the United Nations Security Council, whose primary responsibility is to maintain global peace, Secretary General Kofi Annan has said the 15-member body is not sufficiently democratic or representative of the world organisation's vastly increased membership.
"I think we all have to admit that the council can be more democratic and more representative," Annan told reporters, pointing out that number of council members has remained unchanged since 1965, when the UN itself had only a fraction of its current 191 member states.
"There is a democracy deficit in the UN governance that has to be corrected."
In a reform package issued earlier this year in his report In larger freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all, Annan proposed increasing council membership to 24 and the General Assembly begun its first round of open debate on reform.
"Of course, it's up to the members to determine whether they will let size trump democracy," he said.
"We are the ones who go around the world lecturing everybody about democracy. I think it's about time we apply it to ourselves and then show that there is effective representation," he added.