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Azerbaijan on Monday secured a seat on the U.N. Security Council in 2012-2013 after Slovenia withdrew from the race following 16 inconclusive rounds of voting.

Azerbaijan's victory was confirmed when it received 155 votes in the 193-nation U.N. General Assembly, ensuring that it joins Pakistan, Morocco, Guatemala and Togo as temporary members of the 15-nation council in January. Those four nations were elected to the council last Friday, Reuters reported.

The Security Council is the powerhouse of the United Nations, with the ability to impose sanctions and dispatch peacekeeping forces.

Western diplomats in New York said that Azerbaijan might join other nations resisting any renewed U.S. and European Union push for U.N. sanctions against Iran or Syria next year. They said Pakistan would likely take a similar approach.

A Slovenian diplomat made clear his disappointment to the assembly when he announced the decision of the tiny Alpine nation and European Union member state to withdraw after 16 rounds of voting failed to produce a winner.

"We don't approve the way this campaign was held and we don't approve the way these elections were held," he said.

Slovenia had been trailing Azerbaijan by around 40 votes.

It will be the first stint on the council for Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic.

In the most competitive council elections for years, only Guatemala ran unopposed within its region. Pakistan scraped through in the first round of voting, defeating Kyrgyzstan for an Asian seat with the minimum required tally.

There are five veto-holding, nuclear-armed permanent members of the council -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China -- and 10 temporary elected members without vetoes. With India and Pakistan on the council next year, seven of the 15 members will be nuclear powers.

‘Triumph of government’s policy’
President Ilham Aliyev has termed Azerbaijan’s election as a non-permanent UN SC member as a triumph of the government’s policy.

"This is a victory of the Azerbaijani people and government, it is a triumph of our policy," he said in a statement. "I want to share my joy over this great victory with the citizens of Azerbaijan. I would like to assure the Azerbaijani people once again that our country will continue to develop successfully, and there are many more victories ahead."

Aliyev said Azerbaijan’s winning a U.N. council seat at the time of its 20th independence anniversary is "very symbolic".

"It shows that during 20 years Azerbaijan has demonstrated itself as an independent state, as a glorious country in the world," he said.

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov told reporters in New York after the UN SC elections that Baku intends to put a number of issues on the council’s agenda, with the key ones being international peace and security.

The minister noted that other key issues include assistance to underdeveloped countries, environmental protection and multiculturalism.

"As an economically developed country, we understand that we have to help underdeveloped nations," he said.

On the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Nagorno Karabakh, Mammadyarov said tabling the issue in the UN SC "does not depend only on our will and desire, but depends on all parties concerned."

Azerbaijani Presidential Administration department head Ali Hasanov told the press in Astrakhan, Russia that as a non-permanent member of the UN SC, Azerbaijan gains the right to put on discussion the issue of its violated territorial integrity. He was referring to the occupation of a part of Azerbaijani territory by neighboring Armenia, which has been ongoing since a brutal war in the early 1990s.

Hasanov said the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group, remains an unresolved issue.

"During the two-year period, Azerbaijan will avail of its non-permanent UN SC membership to demand reinstatement of the norms of international law," he said.

Hasanov regarded Azerbaijan’s gaining a UN SC seat as an "historic event" and an indicator of the country’s increasing influence on the world stage.