Giving fillip to diplomatic lobbying for a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), India has expedited its joint efforts with Japan, Germany and Brazil (G4) to build up pressure for UN reforms aimed at expansion of UNSC. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar has spoken to his counterparts of these three countries in this regard, sources said.
All the three nations of the group have agreed to deal with the Dragon’s hurdle in India’s struggle for the UNSC goal. Apart from India, Japan, Germany and Brazil have been trying to be permanent members of the UNSC for several now.
PM Narendra Modi has never missed any opportunity to assertively push India’s claim to a permanent membership in the UNSC. As a result of PM Modi’s strong pitch for the same, US President Donald Trump has extended his full support for a permanent seat to India in the UNSC. Sources said PM Modi is keen that this goal is achieved at the earliest as this will be a stern message to China as well.
Now, EAM S. Jaishankar has become more active and asked diplomats to work in this direction. Diplomats are said to have been asked to work together with Japan, Germany and Brazil in a more aggressive manner. Russia has also asked the group of the four nations to move forward and it will be supporting the endeavour whole-heartedly at every stage.
India, Japan, Germany, and Brazil (the G4) are eyeing permanent seats at the UNSC for a quite long time now. The UN body has currently only five veto-wielding powers — United States, Russia, Britain, France, and China. With India shifting the diplomacy in top gear, the important development is that the three nations of the group have agreed to help India remove China bottlenecks from its path to attaining the seat in UNSC. “Now, India will not be fighting a lone battle against Chinese ploy in its quest for UNSC membership,” said an official underlining New Delhi’s new strategy.
China has always been against India’s bid for a permanent seat in the UNSC. Beijing makes it a point to throw a spanner in India’s plan for that. Sources said that Jaishankar while speaking to foreign ministers of Japan, Brazil and Germany made it clear that no country’s (read China’s) bid to create hurdles will be allowed to succeed.
All the four countries (G4) are learnt to have served an ultimatum saying “the supporters of Security Council reforms will be forced to look for other ways to move the process forward if the UN’s Intergovernmental Negotiations (IGN) for reform continues to be “held hostage” by those opposing change.”
India’s Deputy Permanent Representative Nagaraj Naidu has issued the warning in a letter to General Assembly President Tijjani Muhammad-Bande written on behalf of the G-4, the group of four countries that mutually support each other for a permanent seat on a reformed Security Council.
The G4 nations’ reference is to China which is opposing change or reforms for that matter in the United Nations. In a BRICS foreign ministers meet on Saturday, Jaishankar had stressed the need to reform the United Nations and called for expansion of the Security Council to “include New Delhi as a permanent member”. He had also urged the BRICS members to support India’s mission for the same.
Sources said that the Prime Minister’s Office has decided to take a fortnightly report from the MEA on the progress related to diplomatic efforts for the permanent seat. “How China has to be tackled needs to be decided by the EAM and IFS officers who have been assigned this job in the United Nations,” said an official.