Correspondent|ZIMBABWE can win one of five UN Security Council seats up for election in the next two years, President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s spokesman has said, although analysts doubted the southern African country would win approval by two-thirds of the world body’s General Assembly members to secure a term.

The General Assembly has just elected Germany, Belgium, South Africa, the Dominican Republic and Indonesia for a two-year term in the Security Council starting on January 1, 2019.

Presidential spokesman George Charamba told the Daily News that Zimbabwe needs the backing of the continent to earn the Security Council seat.

“The UN is an intergovernmental institution. He is a citizen expressing a wish for his own government. It has to be taken to an inter-governmental event,” Charamba said. “There are due processes that are followed.”

Charamba said the proposal was feasible given that Zimbabwe has previously held a seat in the UN Security Council, when it voted in 1990 to authorize the United States and its allies to expel Iraq from Kuwait by force if President Saddam Hussein, now late, did not withdraw his forces.

Charamba said Zimbabwe was part of the Security Council members who came up with a plan to observe “a pause of good will” until a January 15 deadline date by taking no further actions against Iraq and concentrating on diplomatic efforts to promote a peaceful settlement.

Zimbabwe was part of the rotating members of the Security Council who supported the resolution, and the action was a success, he said.

“We have been in the UN Security Council when Saddam was kicked out of Kuwait, the first time,” Charamba told the Daily News.

“We have been there. Its not a novel idea, Africa will have to have permanent seats. We have to proffer ourselves, backed by the continent to be on the UN Security Council. We should have the attitude to handle it on rotational basis. At some point it must become an entitlement. We are a paid up member of the UN. You can vie for any space, for any opening. Its a right that comes with membership. He is just wishing the best for his country,” Charamba said of the maverick businessman, who is also a director of the continental lobby Pan African Business Forum.

Set up in 1946 after the World War II, the UNSC comprises 15 members, five of them – Britain, France, China, the United States and Russia – are permanent, while 10 are non-permanent members that serve for two years.