India to push for early comprehensive UNSC reform

United Nations: India will push hard for an early implementation of comprehensive reform of the UN Security Council and expansion in its membership when inter-governmental negotiations on the issue begin on Thursday.

The negotiations will be chaired by Afghanistan's Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Zaheer Tanin.

Tanin is the Chair of the 'Intergovernmental Negotiations on the question of equitable representation and increase in the membership of the Security Council.'

Discussions will take place in five rounds of talks, which will run through April.

The first meeting slated for January 26 will have the G4 nations - India, Brazil, Germany and Japan, taking the floor.

"India will be pushing very hard for UNSC reforms and expansion of membership of the Council. We will be strongly presenting our case and will actively participate in the talks," an Indian official told PTI here.

In its second and last year as non-permanent member of the 15-nation Council, India would press for negotiations on the UNSC reform to move forward.

India has repeatedly stressed that mere "cosmetic changes" to the UN Security Council will not improve its effectiveness and has asked its five permanent members to realise that the reform of the powerful body, including its expansion, is necessary to reflect contemporary realities.

During the meeting of the G4 nations, focus will be on a "short resolution" that calls for "early reforms of the Security Council, expansion in both its permanent and non-permanent categories and improvement in its working methods.

A letter signed by India's Permanent Representative Hardeep Singh Puri, German envoy Peter Wittig, Brazilian Ambassador Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti and Japan's Tsuneo Nishida states that the G4 has been reaching out to other member states to discuss the draft resolution "in order to open a door for reform of the Security Council and generate momentum to start real negotiations.

"We believe it is time to start the real negotiations," the envoys said.

The four nations said they have garnered support of over 80 member states for comprehensive UNSC reforms and "such strong support for the initiative should be considered as the basis for further discussion in the ongoing intergovernmental negotiations."

During the discussion, member states will "introduce their proposals and indicate how the initiative could be further operationalised in order to continue to move the process forward towards decisive progress," Tanin said in a letter to the UN member states ahead of the negotiations.

The second meeting will be held in the third week of February that will have presentation by the Permanent Representative of Italy.

In the third round of talks, envoys from India and Jamaica will address the meeting on behalf of the L-69 group, the bloc of 40 nations from Africa, Latin America, Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific countries.

The final two rounds of talks, scheduled in April, will have discussions involving the African nations and 'Small 5' group of Costa Rica, Jordan, Singapore, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.