New Delhi
14 November 2007
International priorities in South Asia blend with India's national
priorities, Minister of External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee told Indian and foreign
diplomats on Wednesday.
India therefore is ready and willing to work energetically and creatively in partnership
with other actors on the international stage for tackling terrorism and minimising the risk
of weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of irresponsible actors, he said,
alluding to a "ferment in India's neighbourhood" in his keynote address after
inaugurating the new campus of the Foreign Service Institute in New Delhi.
"In India, we are acutely aware of the ferment in our neighbourhood and the need to
ensure a peaceful periphery for our and the region's development. Here again,
international priorities blend with our national priorities," Mr Mukherjee said. He
unveiled a bust of Mr Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister and minister of
external affairs.
The minister said that for a large, diverse, developing democracy located in a region
going through many painful transitions, the issues of extremism and intolerance,
international terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction are not academic
concerns, but real, daily issues.
"We have to respond to them energetically, creatively and in partnership with other
actors on the international stage," he said.
Mr Mukherjee asserted that the issue of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction
and the possibility of their falling into the hands of terrorists cannot be addressed
merely by focussing on supply-side technology controls.
"The so-called AQ Khan network made a mockery of these controls. A new approach is
required, which also prioritises disarmament," he said, recalling that India reiterated her
traditional commitment to nuclear disarmament through a working paper submitted to the
United Nations General Assembly.
He repeated his pitch for an international agreement on no first use of nuclear weapons.
"We believe that a good beginning would be to formalise a no-first use agreement
internationally as a step towards delegitimizing nuclear weapons. This approach was
adopted in 1925 in the Geneva Protocol on chemical and biological weapons and
ultimately led to their elimination," he noted.
(The Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other
Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, commonly known as the Geneva
Protocol, was signed on 17 June 1925. It is effectively a no-first-use agreement because
many of its signatories have reserved to themselves a right to retaliate in kind if
chemical and/or biological weapons should ever be used against them by enemies or
allies of enemies.)
Alluding again to a democracy deficit in India's immediate neighbourhood, Mr Mukherjee
said that the Indian experience is that democracy is essential to the management of the
diverse aspirations of a plural society. He qualified by saying that people are sovereign
in choosing how to govern themselves.
He quickly went on to suggest that the management of global diversity under conditions
of interdependence would require the application of democratic principles to global
governance as well.
"[The] composition of the UN Security Council too needs to come to terms with present
reality and reflect future potential. This premier institution of global governance needs to
be democratised and India needs to find its rightful place in an expanded Council," he
reminded his audience.
"India," he added for good measure, "is not looking for new poles, but rather a pluralistic
world order that is reflective of the diversity of the world today and accommodating of
new players who can contribute solutions to tomorrow's problems."
No comments:
Post a Comment