PM Modi pitch for UN reforms during bilateral meets

Before his address to the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit on Friday, Modi met Jordan’s King Abdullah II, and later in the day, is scheduled to meet the Sri Lankan President, the Prime Ministers of Bhutan and Sweden, and the Presidents of Egypt and Cyprus.

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Modi also has a scheduled “pull aside” with the leader of Saint Lucia, which submitted to the UN that “by unanimously recognising [a text],” the Assembly had made a “game-changing development in the shadow-boxing” that had thus far taken place behind the scenes.

Though the text was adopted by consensus, there are a group of 17 countries, including Pakistan, Russia, China and the US, that declined to provide inputs for the text during the Inter-Governmental Negotiations in the 69th session. Another group of 58 countries stayed away from the text.

India and other members of the G-4 — Brazil, Germany and Japan — are seeking broad-based support for when negotiations for the reform begin in November. On Saturday, Modi will host a G-4 summit.

Earlier, Modi held meetings with the Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves, and Guyana President David Granger.

Modi thanked Gonsalves for his country’s support during the text-based negotiations, MEA spokesman Vikas Swarup said. Indian provides training and capacity-building assistance to the country, and the PM promised more of this during his meeting with Gonsalves.

“Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is a small country in the Caribbean with a population of just 102,000. Yet it has an influential voice in the United Nations. In particular, the Prime Minister thanked the Prime Minister Gonsalves for the leadership he had shown at the time of the text-based negotiations issue which came up in the IGN and as a result of the initiative taken by countries like St. Vincent and the Grenadines, we are able to get a UNGA decision on having text-based negotiations,” Swarup said.

Swarup said with Guyana, a country which has a significant Indian population, Modi emphasised “how all countries needed to cooperate with each other more closely in order to effect the much-needed reforms of the Security Council”.

India is also seeking support for a convention on combating terror, efforts towards which Sri Lanka is leading, and which is likely to come up for discussion in December.