UNITED NATIONS - China's UN Ambassador Li Baodong said Thursday that UN Security Council reform should give top priority to increasing the representation of developing countries, in particular that of African countries.

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"China supports necessary and reasonable reform of the Security Council," Li told a plenary session of the UN General Assembly.

"Security Council reform should give top priority to increasing the representation of developing countries, in particular that of African countries, and give more small and medium-sized countries access to the council and its decision-making process," he said.

Li said that the five clusters of key issues concerning Security Council reform are "closely linked and should not be addressed in isolation."

"There has to be a package solution to the reform. The ' piecemeal' or 'step-by-step' approach leads nowhere," the ambassador stressed.

He said that the reform should include not only expansion of the representation of the council, but also improvement of its working methods.

The reform should help improve the authority and efficiency of the council and enable it to perform more effectively the responsibilities entrusted by the UN Charter, he said.

Security Council reform is a complex and difficult engineering project involving the future of the United Nations and the immediate interests of all member states, he said.

"Member states are still divided over the approaches to the reform, it is necessary to stick to democratic and patient consultations and meet each other halfway," Li added. "China is opposed to setting an artificial time limit."