India has emphasised the need to fortify efforts to reform the UN Security Council through negotiations based on the non-paper published by the advisory group set up by visiting president of the United Nations General Assembly John W Ashe.
India has really laid out the red carpet for Ashe, who has been described by sources as having “assisted in decisive forward movement on the subject of United Nations Security Council reforms”.
The Caribbean diplomat had set up an advisory group of ambassadors, which produced a non-paper last year, which was proposed to be the basis for taking forward Inter-Governmental negotiations (IGN) on reforms.
External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid held talks with Ashe, in which they discussed UNSC reforms extensively.
Official sources said India praised the non-paper of the advisory group, whose chair Noel Sinclair was a part of Ashe’s delegation, claiming it has “injected more significant momentum” to the IGN process. Presenting India’s position unambiguously, Khurshid “hoped that the president of the General Assembly would make adequate use of it (non-paper) by commencing text-based negotiations”.
The G-4 had clearly wished for the non-paper to be the start of substantive text-based negotiations, but opposition from permanent members like Russia, China, the Arab bloc had led to a more cautionary approach form Ashe. Khurshid called for maintaining momentum on the expansion and reform of the UNSC, so that “clearly identifiable progress” could be made during the Intergovernmental Negotiations.
Sources added that the Minister also emphasised on the need for moving to a “creative phase” in terms of the Security Council reforms, so as to achieve “concrete outcomes by 2015”, which would be the 70th anniversary of the Summit of the UN.
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