India’s Bhandari reelected to ICJ
PRACTICAL APPROACH Britain’s Greenwood quits as chances of breaking stalemate over vote fades out; both were sitting judges
: Dalveer Bhandari, India’s nominee to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), was on Monday night re-elected to the last seat of the world court, wrapping up the vote easily at UN’s security council and the general assembly after Britain withdrew its candidate from the election.
Britain’s Christopher Greenwood withdrew his candidature, faced with seemingly dim prospects of winning without invoking arcane diplomatic instruments.
Bhandari won 183 of the 193 votes in the general assembly and all 15 in the security council as the two bodies gathered on Monday afternoon (US time) to resume the contentious voting that had gone on for two separate days, with both candidates retaining a lock on their respective leads with marginal movement on either side.
Faced with an impossible situation, Britain was earlier expected to invoke a rarely used instrument to call for a “joint conference” to select a judge to fill the fifth vacancy on the court, ending the election in which its candidate was locked in a stalemate
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contest with Bhandari, both of whom were sitting judges seeking another term.
In a statement, UK Ambassador to UN Matthew Rycroft said: “The UK has concluded that it is wrong to continue to take up the valuable time of the security council and the UN General Assembly with further rounds of elections. We are naturally disappointed, but it was a competitive field with six strong candidates.”
Britain needed nine votes in the council to successfully invoke the conference, which it was hoping to secure on the basis of the nine votes that Greenwood won in all of the five rounds that took place during voting last Thursday — he held a 9-5 lead over Bhandari, who had slipped from 6-8.
“These members may have voted for Greenwood,” said a diplomat on condition of anonymity so as to be able to speak freely, “but could take the position now that voting to elect someone is one thing and voting to throttle a vote, an election process is another and could have implications.”