United Nations, Aug 23 (IANS): The UN Security Council reform process has "made substantive progress" and come up with a framework that could get the support of the world body's members, according to General Assembly President Dennis Francis.

“I'm pleased to see that the process has, thus far pretty much, delivered what I consider to be a framework that could, on balance, attract the support of the membership as a solid basis for continuing to work,” he said on Thursday introducing a note of optimism about the long-stalled discussions.

“There is considerable appetite in the house for Security Council reform to be effective,” he said about the reform process formally known as the Inter-Governmental Negotiations (IGN).

He was responding to a question about the structural reforms that could make the UN more effective in meeting its future challenges.

The reform process started in 1993 with a working group that morphed into the IGN by 2007 has not been able to start formal negotiations because of opposition from some countries to the adoption of a formal negotiating document.

This is mainly because of a group of 12 countries calling themselves Uniting for Consensus have used procedural gambits to block it.

“Substantive progress has been made,” Francis said, but acknowledging this hurdle, he added, “At the moment, and I must emphasise this, there are no formal negotiations for Security Council”.

“When to commence formal negotiations,” he said, “is a decision that the members will take”.

“Much time and effort has gone into examining the various formulas that are on the table, establishing clarity,” Francis added.

Francis was participating in a media briefing with two high school students who were “General Assembly Presidents for a Day”, an outreach programme to create awareness of the organisation among youth.

One of them, Fariha Akter, 15, is a Bangladeshi immigrant.