South Africa, India and Brazil have agreed to boost their campaign for permanent seats on the UN Security Council to achieve "concrete results" by September 2007.
Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and her counterparts Pranab Mukherjee of India and Celso Amorim of Brazil agreed on this in the Indian capital New Delhi on Tuesday.
They were co-chairing the Trilateral Commission of the India-Brazil-SA Dialogue Forum (Ibsa) which co-ordinates the actions of the three countries on international issues.
The three countries, as well as Japan, Germany and some other African nations, have been campaigning for over two years for permanent seats on an expanded UN Security Council.
But the campaign fizzled out in 2006 partly because the African Union and the other main candidates for permanent seats could not agree on a common strategy.
However, in a joint communique issued after Tuesday's Ibsa ministerial meeting, the three ministers agreed to pursue permanent seats "on an urgent basis, with a view to achieving concrete results by the end of the 61st UN General Assembly".
The 61st session ends on September 17, 2007.
It is likely that Dlamini-Zuma also discussed the renewed push for permanent seats when she met Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after the Ibsa meeting.
It was not clear on Tuesday whether South Africa, India and Brazil had adopted a new strategy for pursuing permanent seats to give new momentum to the flagging campaign.
India, Brazil, Japan and Germany formed the G-4 coalition in 2005 to boost their campaign for permanent seats and decided that they would not seek veto rights in the first place as this would diminish their chances of getting permanent seats. The current five permanent members of the Security Council all have veto rights.