UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 9 (Xinhua) -- Britain and India were in a tug-of-war on Thursday at UN headquarters in New York over whose candidate would return to the International Court of Justice.
After a whole day of work, the UN General Assembly and the Security Council were able to elect four judges for The Hague-based world court. The fifth vacancy was hotly contested by British jurist Christopher Greenwood and India's Dalveer Bhandari. Both were seeking re-election.
Under the Statute of the International Court of Justice, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, a candidate has to obtain an absolute majority in both chambers to get elected -- 97 out of 193 votes in the General Assembly and eight out of 15 in the Security Council. Voting in the two chambers must be held concurrently.
After four rounds of voting at both chambers, Ronny Abraham of France, Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf of Somalia, Antonio Augusto Cancado Trindade of Brazil, who were seeking re-election, were successful in their bids for another term of nine years.
Nawaf Salam of Lebanon, a new contender, also passed the threshold of required votes in both chambers.
The two chambers started proceedings for the election of a fifth judge. The new round of contention, however, turned out to be in a deadlock: Greenwood was favored by the Security Council with nine votes, but could not win majority in the General Assembly; Bhandari won absolute majority in the assembly with 115 votes, but got only six votes at the council.
Given the discrepancy, the two chambers decided to call it a day for now and would resume election on Monday.
The newly elected judges would begin their terms of office on Feb. 6, 2018.
