Pakistan has won a seat as a non-permanent member of the powerful UN Security Council. That puts it in the club of ten nations which currently includes India. Pakistan secured 129 votes, more than the required two-thirds majority in the 193 member General Assembly. The membership is for two years beginning January 1, 2012. The country’s contender was Kyrgyzistan in the Asia-Pacific category. India joined as a non-permanent member of the UNSC in January 2011. Both neighbours are nuclear powers. They had been together in the Council previously in 1968, 1977 and 1984.
Of course, the main force behind the inclusion of Pakistan in the UNSC was the US. On the surface it is at variance with the statements made by former US military chief Admiral Mike Mulligan and by President Barack Obama himself which sounded like warnings. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who is now in Pakistan has been relentlessly trying to dissuade the latter from playing its current role of spoiler in Afghanistan, mainly through the Haqqani group with a mix of pressure, persuasion and outright threat. Clinton has said that Pakistan will have to pay a big price if it did not change its course. Her comments on Pakistan have been the bluntest in recent years. She reiterated that extremists had been operating in Pakistan and from Pakistan soil. “You cannot keep snakes in your backyard,” she had said earlier. The entry of Pakistan into the UNSC as a non-permanent member does not make much difference in this area. It has no veto power and its membership is only for two years. What all this suggests is that the US is playing around with a crafty policy of blowing hot and cold with its old client country.
