Sanae Takaichi says UN Security Council reform must "transform it without delay"

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told leaders at the UN General Assembly high-level meeting that reforming the UN Security Council is a priority. Her remarks came amid a push by the G4—Japan, India, Brazil and Germany—whose foreign ministers met Wednesday in New York and expressed strong concern that 18 years of intergovernmental negotiations have yielded no concrete outcome. The ministers called for expanding the council's permanent and non-permanent membership and improving representation for Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean. They opposed a bridging proposal before text-based negotiations, welcomed an African Group reform model, and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and other leaders separately urged permanent African representation.