UNITED NATIONS, MAY 27: After 40 years of exclusion, Israel was given temporary membership in a United Nations regional group that opens the way for its eventual election to key UN bodies.Israel's UN envoy, Yehuda Lancry, said he received a letter on Friday from the current chairman of the West European and Others Group (WEOG), ambassador Peter van Walsum of the Netherlands, informing him of the group's decision. Lancry called it "an historic turning point" in the relationship between Israel and the UN, and said his government would respond formally within a few days.Many UN committee posts as well as 10 rotating seats on the Security Council are nominated by five regional groups to retain a geographical balance. Although some nations never get nominated, only Israel could not compete at all. Opposition from Arab and other countries has prevented Israel from joining the Asian group, which corresponds to its geographical region.Van Walsum's letter, the result of months of negotiations, said: "On behalf of WEOG members I have the pleasure of informing you that, in the light of Israel's current inability to join the Asian group and taking into account the understandings set out below, WEOG welcomes Israel as a full member of WEOG on a temporary basis."Israel's membership will be for an initial four years, after which it will be subject to confirmation by the group. The "understandings," or conditions, referred to by van Walsum will prevent Israel from submitting candidates for any contested UN posts for two years and would bar it from a few posts for considerably longer.In addition to the 15 members of the European Union, the group includes Australia, New Zealand, Canada and others. The United States is a member for some purposes. Elections to most UN bodies, including the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, General Assembly committees and the World Court, are organised on the basis of the five regional groups.The groups try to avoid intramural squabbles by agreeing in advance which of their members will be offered as candidates. Israel, a UN member since 1949, is the only member barred from any regional group since the system developed in the early 1960s. As a result, it has waged a long battle, with support from the US, to join WEOG.In recent months President Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and US Ambassador Richard Holbrooke lobbied Europeans on Israel's candidacy. The conditions that bar Israel from competing for seats in UN bodies for two years were drawn up by the EU and then endorsed by all WEOG members.After two years WEOG would consider Israel's candidaturefor vacant posts "on a case-by-case basis and support them where previously agreed by the group," van Walsum wrote."He said that, as Lancry himself indicated in a letter last month formally requesting WEOG membership, Israel's entry would not affect existing rotation schedules allocating forthcoming vacancies in four specific U.N. bodies.These are the: Economic and Social Council, whose WEOG candidates have already been designated (until 2021); the governing council of the UN Development Programme (until 2007); the executive board of the UN Children's Fund (also until 2007); and the UN AIDS programme (until 2012).As part of its drive for WEOG membership, Israel last year requested a legal opinion from then-World Court President Sir Robert Jennings of Britain. Jennings wrote last November that Israel's exclusion from the regional group system was "both unlawful and strikes at the root of the principles on which the United Nations exists.""I venture to suggest that Israel's exclusion should no longer be tolerated; and that it is now an issue of primary importance for the organisation itself to see that it be remedied," Jennings said."So long as its continues, the organisat in is itself in breach of its own charter," he said.
