WASHINGTON, Feb 4: India has called for an immediate expansion of the United Nations Security Council to accommodate developing countries as its permanent members complete with "veto" and other powers currently available only to the existing five such members."Developing countries who become permanent members should not merely have a change of nomenclature, the developing world wants real powers," said India's permanent representative to the UN, Kamlesh Sharma, in his speech at the World body's "Open ended working group" in New York on Tuesday.
He favoured a debate on "objective global criteria for membership -- if not for universal convergence of views, at least to clarify the thinking of the membership and to enable it to decide in the light of its understanding of these global criteria -- approprite for the Security Council".
Sharma had no objection to member-states taking time to consider the important issue of composition of the new permanent membership. "However, we must be prepared to reach ageneral agreement, building on the deliberations in the open ended working group so far," he added.
Though India has staked its claim to the permanent membership hitherto confined only to the US, Russia, China, Britain and France, he did not make any direct reference to his country's demand and instead, preferred to plead the case of the developing countries as a whole.
Sharma began his speech by explaining the rationale behind the demand for expansion of the policy-making body of the UN.
While a vast majority of the UN's membership came from the developing countries, they were "grossly under-represented" in the council's permanent quota. "Therefore, for the Security Council to be representatives of the general membership, it is essential that developing countries become permanent members on it," he added.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
