Strongly backing India's bid for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, France on Thursday said this was absolutely necessary if the global body wanted to remain a "legitimate" place for handling peace and security crisis. Noting that the last reforms to the Security Council were made in the sixties, Ambassador of France to India Jerome Bonnafont said "if we want the Security Council to remain a legitimate place for handling peace and security crisis in the world, it is absolutely necessary to have India as well as couple of others as permanent members." He said the reform was also imperative "in order to avoid unilateralism and to create an environment where countries sit together to address the threats to peace".

However, the French Ambassador here said it was a very difficult reform which needs two-third majority of the UN Assembly besides the five permanent members and "there is a group of countries" who do not want this reform but France was determined to push for it. India has been making a strong pitch for UNSC reforms and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, currently attending the G-8 Summit in Rome, maintain that "the UNSC has not changed at all and its present structure poses serious problems of legitimacy." "The system of two-tiered membership, which gives a veto to the five permanent members i.e. the nations that emerged victorious after the Second World War, is clearly anachronistic," Singh said in an article in the compendium on contemporary global issues brought out for the Summit.