L’Aquila, July 09: India’s fresh bid to get a due place in the United Nations Security Council received impetus in the form of support from Britain.
Britain PM Gordon Brown reportedly expressed support for India’s endeavour to restructure the UNSC, among other institutions, to reflect the world of 21st Century where India is seen an emerging power.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh held the bilateral meeting with his British counterpart in this earthquake-hit Italian mountain town. The two discussed a wide range of issues including trade, agriculture and terror.
The meeting lasted 45 minutes. Briefing reporters on the meeting, the second in three months after their earlier engagement this year in London in April, an official spokesman said it also touched on the issue of restructuring of the global financial architecture. He confirmed that UK had supported India’s expanded role in UNSC.
On climate change, the two leaders reflected on taking up joint development of green technology projects.
Singh gave Brown his perspectives on India’s national action plan on climate change and provided him a copy of it. India’s questions and answers preparatory to Copenhagen summit were also mentioned. The Prime Minister invited Brown to participate in a conference on climate change in Delhi in October this year where technology transfer and development would be discussed.
On Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett had said, “India has become such an important and central part of the global infrastructure that just about everything that Britain wants to achieve internationally requires us to work in partnership with India.”
“We can’t just discuss specifically Indian or British issues with our Indian counterparts – we need to be discussing the whole gamut of global issues. That is why we are such strong supporters of India’s permanent membership of the UN Security Council and its adequate representation in other international organisations,” Beckett said, while addressing members of the Labour Friends of India in London on Tuesday evening.
India has again broached the subject of UNSC’s expansion at the G-8 summit this year. In an article for he has written for The Vision of Emerging Powers – India, PM Manmohan Singh has said, “The Security Council 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 ie the nations that emerged victorious after the Second World War, is clearly anachronistic.”
“It is obvious that if the system was being designed today it would be very different,” he said while critiquing the sluggish movement in the crucial area of reforms of international institutions.
Making a case for the inclusion of emerging and developing countries in the Security Council and global financial institutions, the Prime Minister outlined his vision of India’s place in the international order.
“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.
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.
“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.
The Prime Minister will be attending the outreach meeting of the G5 – the group of five most emerging economies in the world comprising India, China, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa – being held parallel to the G8 meeting of the world’s most wealthy and industrialised countries.
Manmohan Singh will be meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday for a bilateral meeting followed by another one with Japan’s Prime Minister Taro Aso on Friday. He will also meet the Angola President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos the same day.
The Prime Minister is likely to meet US President Barack Obama informally during the G8-G5 summit.
L’Aquila was hit by a major earthquake in April this year leaving nearly 300 people dead, over 1,500 injured and about 60,000 homeless amid concerns of more tremors in the region. The last tremor to hit the town was on Friday (July 3) and measured 4.1 on the Richter scale.
“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.
The Prime Minister will be attending the outreach meeting of the G5 – the group of five most emerging economies in the world comprising India, China, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa – being held parallel to the G8 meeting of the world’s most wealthy and industrialised countries.
Manmohan Singh will be meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday for a bilateral meeting followed by another one with Japan’s Prime Minister Taro Aso on Friday. He will also meet the Angola President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos the same day.
The Prime Minister is likely to meet US President Barack Obama informally during the G8-G5 summit.
L’Aquila was hit by a major earthquake in April this year leaving nearly 300 people dead, over 1,500 injured and about 60,000 homeless amid concerns of more tremors in the region. The last tremor to hit the town was on Friday (July 3) and measured 4.1 on the Richter scale.
-Agencies