As PM’s visit nears, India raises pitch on UNSC expansion

New Delhi, August 29: Ahead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to the United Nations General Assembly in the third week of September, India has raised its pitch for the expansion of the UN Security Council.

Singh is expected to make a bid for a permanent seat at the UN high table when he will address the UN General Assembly on September 21, sources said. He will leave for New York on September 19.

India’s permanent representative to the UN, Nirupam Sen, chose the “open debate” on the UN Security Council’s working methods — for the first time in 14 years — held on August 27 to drive home the point that “genuine and lasting improvement of the working methods of the Council can only be possible as part of a comprehensive process of Security Council reform, based on both reform and expansion of its composition in permanent and non-permanent categories”.

“It is only when there are new permanent members, who are held accountable to the wider membership through an appropriate review mechanism, that there will be a genuine response to the long standing demand for meaningful and durable changes in the working methods of the Council,” he said.

“In the absence of such a comprehensive reform, a fundamental improvement in the working methods would either escape us as it has for more than 60 years or, even if miraculously achieved, would not last without the institutional memory, continuing commitment and peer example of new permanent members held accountable to the general membership,” Sen said at the day-long meeting where 45 countries spoke.

New Delhi’s latest intervention assumes significance, since the PM will be going for the UNGA next month after a gap of two years.

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