New York, Jan. 9: After Japan, it will be Germany’s turn this week to be at the receiving end of the Bush administration’s pressure to abandon the Group of Four (G4) countries campaigning for permanent seats in a reformed UN Security Council.

Germany’s new chancellor Angela Merkel will meet President George W. Bush in Washington on Friday.

According to German diplomats, one of the issues that will come up for discussion at the summit is the expansion of the Security Council.

Merkel, who has shown her preference for an American embrace during her years in the Opposition and throughout Germany’s recent election campaign, would be happy to dump India and Brazil, the only remaining “active” members of the G4, after Japan virtually abandoned the group last week.

But she is in a coalition of necessity with the other big party in Germany, the Social Democratic Party, whose government was instrumental in creating the G4.

She also has to contend with the power of professional German diplomats who campaigned worldwide for more than a year for the G4 strategy of pushing for Germany’s permanent membership at the UN’s high table.

Top German diplomats profess open party loyalties and are, in the foreign ministry, a parallel power centre with whom politicians have to work.

Germany is one of the sponsors of last week’s re-tabled resolution on Security Council reform along with India and Brazil, but Berlin’s diplomats are making it clear that they have no illusions about its passage.

They admit to efforts to talk to the Americans, who rebuffed Germany’s overtures, concentrating their efforts so far on weaning Tokyo away from the G4.

But having done that, the Bush administration is now expected to focus its attention on Merkel and her team.

Japan appears to have convinced its G4 partners, including India, that by unilaterally talking to the Americans, they are sharing the G4 burden of bringing Washington on board.

The Japanese have told their G4 counterparts here that they are confident of changing minds within the Bush administration on expanding the Security Council.

German diplomats, who played a big part last week in drafting an explanatory note that came with the re-tabled resolution, have made it clear in the note that the G4 nations “do not aim at a vote on the resolution in the immediate future, but intend to explore the potential of joining hands with all member states supporting structural reform of the Security Council”.

German diplomats agreed to go along with India and Brazil as a tactical move to counter the 53-member African Union (AU), which has tabled its own resolution seeking 11 new seats in an expanded Security Council, including six permanent seats with veto power.

The G4 believes the AU resolution will be defeated if it is put to vote, making the re-tabled proposal by India, Germany and Brazil the only concrete scheme on the General Assembly’s table when it considers expansion of the Security Council.