After more than a year of bitter campaigning, Cambodia saw its efforts
to win one of five non-permanent seats on the UN Security Council fall flat
early this morning after the vote went to South Korea.
In an election held at the UN
General Assembly in New York, that stretched just past midnight local time and
went into a second round of voting, Cambodia garnered just 43 votes—falling far
short of the necessary two-thirds majority needed for the win.
In addition to South Korea,
Australia, Luxembourg, Rwanda and Argentina won seats as well.
The loss comes as a blow to the
Kingdom, which announced its candidacy for the seat in January 2011 and has
heavily ramped up campaigning over the course of the past year.
All nine ASEAN member states agreed
to support the bid, and government officials had, months earlier, claimed
they'd received confirmed support from more than 100 countries.
But mere hours before yesterday's
vote, diplomats maintained that the race for the Asian seat remained too close
to predict, according to Reuters, and the vote, which Bhutan lost in the first
round, had to go to a rare second round.
Cambodia's loss puts South Korea
in one of 10 non-permanent, two-year term seats in the powerful, 15-member body
that is tasked with maintaining peace but is capable of authorizing military
action. Five other positions are held permanently, and with veto power, by the
US, Russia, Britain, China and France.
Headed by special envoy to the
prime minister Hor Nam Bora, who also serves as an ambassador to six nations
and is the son of Foreign Minister Hor Namhong, the Cambodian campaign focused
heavily on its experience with peace-keeping and nation building.
"Cambodia fully understands
the pain and suffering inflicted by war and internal conflict and attaches
great importance to preventing and resolving potential difficulties wherever
they are," the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote in its official candidacy
brochure.
The sentiment was echoed by
Namhong last month when he pressed Cambodia's bid at the UN General Assembly
last month, telling envoys the nation hoped a seat would allow it to contribute
to: "the cause of peace, security and peaceful settlement of conflicts
nowadays."
But while Cambodian diplomats
have been stumping heavily, its efforts have been hotly contested by rights
monitors in recent months who have urged the international community to take
what they've termed a deteriorating human rights record into account before
voting.
Officials at the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs could not immediately be reached for comment early this
morning.
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