Hosting a lunch for the diplomatic corps in Pretoria commemorating the formation in 1963 of the Organisation of African Unity, President Cyril Ramaphosa seeks international support for South Africa to become a rotating member of the United Nations Security Council next year.
Ramaphosa also takes an oblique swipe at US President Donald Trump scrapping the nuclear deal with Iran.
President Cyril Ramaphosa says he’s humbled by the African nomination for democratic South Africa to have a third term as a temporary member of the United Nations Security Council in 2019 and 2020.
But he reminds the more than 100 envoys assembled at the presidential guest house that this will require a vote in the UN General Assembly next month and he asks for the strong and lasting support of their countries.
Ramaphosa says South Africa will use its membership of the 15-nation UN powerhouse – as it has on the two previous terms it served there – to further peace and security globally and more specifically in Africa where most of the world’s conflicts are located.
He reiterates South Africa’s strong commitment to multilateralism with the United Nations at its centre and expresses satisfaction at the G20 foreign ministers underlining this at their meeting in Buenos Aires this week.
Without mentioning his US counterpart Donald Trump by name , Ramaphosa expresses concern about the threat to the rules based system posed by the unilateral revocation of binding international agreements.