New Delhi
13 October 2010
Will Barack Obama go beyond George W Bush and support India for a
permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) when he visits New Delhi
next month? While that is the hope, nobody's betting on it.
When Bush was the US president, his secretary of state Condoleezza Rice had said that
Washington supported Japan but it did not endorse the other three members of the
Group of Four (G-4) -- India, Brazil and Germany. The then undersecretary of state
Nicholas Burns had followed it up by saying that the US "will likely support adding two or
so permanent members". Not much appears to have changed since then. Although
Obama sets store by multilateralism -- "with emphasis on the role that the United
Nations" can play, as the Norwegian Nobel committee had said while announcing the
2009 Nobel Peace Prize for him, Washington has stopped short of endorsing India's bid.
On Tuesday, the US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley did not venture beyond
saying that "we are well aware of India's aspirations".
For its part, New Delhi maintains it is not unduly anxious about Obama's equivocation
on the issue. There is a view here, represented by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee,
that India should not hanker after the permanent UNSC berth; that it will eventually come
India's way. External affairs minister SM Krishna holds a similar view but although he
describes India's election Tuesday as a non-permanent UNSC member as "a step
forward", he is acutely aware of the challenges ahead. He concedes that achieving the
goal "will take quite some time" because out of the Permanent Five (P-5) only France and
the UK have extended support to India's candidature so far. The US and China have not
decided, while Russia has agreed to India's candidature only "in principle".
Currently inter-governmental text based negotiations are on but from New Delhi's
perspective though, the real hurdle may come only after the 192-member UN General
Assembly has okayed the proposal because the P-5 will then be required to vote on it,
and any one of the P-5 could veto it. Notwithstanding China's antipathy towards India, Mr
Krishna insists that much will depend on India's own performance as a non-permanent
UNSC member in 2011 and 2012. If India conducts herself "responsibly and objectively",
it will help to convince sceptics and naysayers.
Besides the G-4, the 53-member African Union and the United for Consensus (or Coffee
Club) have advanced their respective proposals for UNSC reform. The Coffee Club
comprises 30-odd countries such as Pakistan, Italy, South Korea and Argentina.
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