UNSC Reforms, Due Place to India in World is PM’s Vision
On his visit to Italy for participating in G-8 summit, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has raised country’s demand of UN Security Council reforms and emphasized that India will seek a suitable place in the emerging international order.
“The structure of United Nations Security Council must evolve to become true representative of the global community,” the prime minister argued in an article he has written for ‘The Vision of Emerging Powers – India’, which has been published in the compendium brought out by the G8 nations on the eve of its summit in Italy.
Terming the present veto power system as outdated, the prime minister wrote: “The system of two-tiered membership, which gives a veto to the five permanent members i.e. the nations that emerged victorious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.”
“Germany and Japan, which have significantly larger economies than Britain and France, both permanent members, are excluded. China is the only developing country in the P-5 and it is there for historical reasons, not as a large and economically important developing country,” he wrote.
“It is obvious that if the system was being designed today it would be very different,” he said in his review of the reforms of international institutions, which, according to him, is quite slow-moving.
Manmohan Singh outlined his vision of India’s place in the international order advocating the inclusion of emerging and developing countries in the Security Council and global financial institutions.
“India, as the largest democracy in the world and an emerging economy that has achieved the ability to grow rapidly, remains deeply committed to multilateralism,” Manmohan Singh said.
“It has been an active member in global institutions – the United Nations, Bretton Woods Institutions, World Trade Organisation, International Atomic Energy Agency and so on. It will continue to be so in the decades ahead, based on commitment to principles and values that define these institutions.”
“India will seek its due place, play its destined role and share its assigned responsibility, giving voice to the hopes and aspirations of a billion people in South Asia,” the prime minister underlined.
He emphasized that India would continue its strive for the reforms of UN to make it more democratic, and address several international issues such as international terrorism, piracy on the high seas, climate change, creating a new financial architecture and an early conclusion of the Doha Round of trade negotiations.
