India makes fresh bid for UNSC seat

8 Jul 2009,

NEW DELHI: India launched a renewed campaign for a seat in the UN Security Council using the forum of the G-8 summit.

In an unusually feisty article written for the compendium of the G-8, prime minister Manmohan Singh said, "The Security Council has not changed at all and its present structure poses serious problems of legitimacy. The system of two-tiered membership, which gives a veto to the five permanent members ie the nations that emerged victorious after the Second World War, is clearly anachronistic."

In his article, the PM made a strong case for reforming all international institutions, from the Security Council to institutions of global and financial governance. "The problems faced by the institutions of governance charged with handling the financial system are also relevant for other international institutions dealing with political and security issues, trade, climate change, etc. They need to update structures and upgrade work methods; reform decision-making and ensure effective delivery," he said.

PM Manmohan Singh has clearly not revised his opinion of the G-8, describing the grouping whose summit he is currently attending as a "group of countries with common interests, not necessarily representative of the global community". In Heilegendamm, the PM had dismissed the G-8 outreach exercise saying he wanted to be there as a "partner" not a "petitioner".

Groupings like G8, he argued, came out of the "unworkability of the existing structures". On the expansion with the G-5 and now African countries, Singh said, "This suffers from two limitations. The expanded group is not cohesive since the countries included for purposes of outreach do not participate fully in the proceedings or the preparations, and the expanded group therefore does not have a composite identity. Second, these groupings do not have any special legitimacy within the UN system."

In the wake of the financial crisis, the PM said the world decided to start yet another mechanism, the G-20, which he complimented for achieving "a great deal more than normal meetings of this type, especially in two respects".

"First, it succeeded in expanding the perimeter of financial regulation and endorsing the establishment of global standards to which national standards can be aligned. These standards will be developed by the Financial Stability Forum (now renamed the Financial Stability Board), which has been expanded to include all G-20 countries that were not members earlier. Second, it achieved a significant expansion in funding for the Bretton Woods Institutions," he said.

None of these measures, he added, led to any significant reform of the international financial institutions.