New Delhi
13 February 2011
External affairs minister SM Krishna's outreach effort at the United Nations (UN)
to introduce a sense of urgency to the text-based negotiations for the Security Council
reform appears to have set the alarm bells ringing in China, which has balked at taking a
position on India's aspirations for a permanent UN Security Council seat.
On Saturday rpt Saturday, Beijing hurriedly deployed its foreign ministry spokesman Ma
Zhaoxu to respond "to a relevant question", which was diligently reported by Xinhua,
China's State-run news agency.
"Experience has proven that presetting results for the reform or forcing premature reform
plans will not only undermine the unity of UN member nations, but also harm the reform
process, which will not be in line with any party's interests," Ma said, betraying Beijing's
discomfiture at being hustled into taking a firmer position on reform of the UN in general
and UN Security Council in particular.
Ma also said that UN member nations should seek a package of solutions for the reform,
on the basis of broad and democratic consultation among member nations to
accommodate interests and concerns of all parties.
The Chinese reaction came the day after Mr Krishna and his counterparts and
representatives from the Group of Four (G-4; comprising India, Brazil, Germany and
Japan) met in New York and issued a joint statement, reaffirming their agreement "to
press ahead, with all necessary steps to achieve at the earliest an expansion in both the
permanent and non-permanent membership categories of the Security Council."
The Chinese spokesman's remarks coincided with foreign secretary Nirupama Rao's
remarks in New York Saturday that China was not expressing itself openly in terms of
India's candidacy although she was hopeful that Beijing would not block India from
getting a permanent UN Security Council seat when the matter came to a vote.
China is the only P5 (Permanent Five) member not to explicitly support India for a
permanent UN Security Council seat.
Although the joint statement issued towards the end of Chinese premier Wen Jiabao's
visit to India in December 2010 said that China understands and supports India's
aspiration to play a greater role in the United Nations, including in the Security Council,
the growing support and urgency for the reforms seems to have caught Beijing by
surprise.
Currently all 192 UN members are considering a five-page document, which is the latest
proposal to come out of the text-based negotiations being chaired by Zahir Tanin,
Afghanistan's envoy to the UN.
On the margins of his participation in a UN Security Council debate on the "maintenance
of international peace and security: interdependence between security and
development", Mr Krishna also met with his counterparts and officials from the "L69"
group comprising 40 countries from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and the
Pacific; IBSA (an acronym for India, Brazil and South Africa); and UN General Assembly
president Joseph Deiss, who is from Switzerland.
"Pressure is mounting here at the United Nations for the UN membership to finally face
the challenge of addressing Security Council reform in a realistic manner, adjusting it to
the current geopolitical realities," foreign minister Antonio de Aguiar Patriota of Brazil
said after his talks with Mr Krishna.
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