At the Heads of Mission conference last week, one of the seniormost diplomats in the country made a case for concerted efforts by India for a non-permanent seat at the UN Security Council where five slots would be vacant by the end of the year.

With Foreign Minister S M Krishna, National Security Advisor M K Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao present on Day 1 of the conference, the diplomat made it clear that New Delhi should not spoil its chances to make it to the Security Council this year.

He apparently told the gathering of over 100 envoys that New Delhi should not do anything to weaken its chances — or Sharm el-Sheikh will look like peanuts.

The Sharm el-Sheikh reference was to the Indo-Pak joint statement signed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistan counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani on July 16 which was criticised by opposition parties at home.

While the diplomat’s remarks were in the context of seats being vacated by Burkina Faso, Costa Rica, Croatia, Libya and Vietnam on completion of their one-year tenure at the UNSC in December, the Sharm-el-Sheikh reference prompted Nirupama Rao to quickly intervene, label the observation as off-the-record and expunge it. Narayanan later said that the Sharm-el-Sheikh joint statement did not signal any substantive departure of Indian policy towards Pakistan.

Although the four-day conference discussed New Delhi’s stance on issues like climate change and WTO, the Indian neighbourhood topped the agenda with the envoys to Beijing, Kathmandu, Thimphu, Islamabad, Colombo, Dhaka and Yangon providing appraisals of the situation in their respective countries.

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