United Nations: India has made a strong call to achieve “concrete outcomes” on reforms of the Security Council by 2015, stressing that the process to expand the powerful UN body cannot go on indefinitely as the “clarion call” for change is growing louder by the day.
“The exercise of UNSC reforms cannot be seen to be going on till the cows come home. Recent developments around the world have increasingly put to question not just the representativeness but also the credibility of the UN Security Council is at stake,” India’s Deputy Permanent Representative Ambassador Manjeev Singh Puri told the UN General Assembly here on Thursday.
“The clarion call for change is only growing louder by the day. All these are important tidings which cannot be ignored in our collective quest to achieve UNSC reforms,” Puri said on the UNGA debate on ‘Equitable Representation on and increase in the membership of the Security Council.’ With several UN member states frustrated by the decades- long UNSC reform process that had yet to produce results, despite nine rounds of Intergovernmental Negotiations since 2009, Puri said there is urgent need to have a “results based time line” to “deliver concrete outcomes on this most pressing subject.” India’s call for urgent reform of the Council and it sitting on the UN high table received backing from key UN members like the UK, France and Mongolia and Hungary which said that “countries that had indicated their readiness to shoulder higher responsibilities, such as Germany, India, Japan and Brazil, should be granted such an opportunity.” Speaking at the UN debate, UK’s Ambassador to the UN Lyall Grant said Britain supports broadening Council membership to include permanent seats for Brazil, Germany, India and Japan, along with permanent African representation. Japan’s Ambassador to the UN Motohide Yoshikawa spoke on behalf of the G-4 bloc, comprising Brazil, Germany, India and Japan. He said as the United Nations approached its 70th Assembly session, it was time to assess achievements and address challenges as severe shortcomings included the lack of a reformed Council that reflected contemporary realities. The year 2015 is the 70th anniversary of the UN and 10 years following the 2005 World Summit when Heads of States mandated the world body to achieve early reforms of the Security Council. Puri said the year 2015 will be an important occasion to deliver concrete results on expansion of permanent and non-permanent members of the Council. Pakistan’s ambassador Masood Khan, however, said that the joint position of Brazil, India, Japan and Germany had remained “stuck” and seemed anchored in power politics. “We cannot precipitate decisions by mounting political pressure before important anniversaries,” Khan said, adding that there are no procedural shortcuts.
Puri also lamented that the nine rounds of intergovernmental negotiations on UNSC reforms have been taking place without any text, a process which defies logic in multilateral diplomacy. He said nations have been conducting “negotiations in the air literally” without having a text to discuss and work upon. “It would be the only instance of its kind perhaps, when negotiations in a multilateral setting have been conducted so far without any text, which goes against the very logic of multilateral diplomacy, and should have started off in the first instance, on the basis of a text,” Puri said. “Anyone who says that we cannot move to text based negotiations, to me is a nay sayer to any forward movement. For if we dont negotiate on the basis of a text, then on what basis do we conduct negotiations,” he added.
Puri stressed that the chair of the intergovernmental negotiations has during the eight rounds spread over five years heard “loud and clear” views of member states and interest groups that a ‘Concise Working Document’ be prepared to enable the process to move towards “real give and take negotiations.” “We subsequently learnt that a select handful group of nay sayers, protested to the President of the General Assembly against the role of the Chair and his recommendations,” he said. (PTI)
