Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US, India has decided to make a massive push for “taking forward” the “text-based negotiations” on the United Nations Security Council reforms in September’s UN General Assembly. The Prime Minister is scheduled to go to New York in the last week of September and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is also likely to participate at the UNGA proceedings. With UNGA president Mogens Lykketoft visiting India on Sunday, and scheduled to meet Modi on Monday, New Delhi is likely to make a “strong case” for expansion of the UNSC in the forthcoming session, which will commemorate 70 years of its existence. Top government sources told The Sunday Express that a decision has been taken at the highest levels to put New Delhi’s weight behind the “text-based negotiations”, so that negotiations can move to a “productive” and “result-oriented” stage on the 70th anniversary of the UN. “After seven years of intergovernmental negotiations, the international community has finally got a text. All these years, the member countries were just articulating their positions on the UNSC reforms, with no negotiating text in front of them. As a result, it was turning out to be an exercise in futility,” said a source in South Block. The intergovernmental negotiations began on September 15, 2008, when a UN decision was taken. However, for the past seven years, there has been no progress as there was no “text” arrived at on which negotiations could have begun. On July 31 this year, the Permanent Representative of Jamaica to the UN Courtenay Rattray — who is chair of the intergovernmental negotiations process — came up with the text. “He was subjected to lot of pressure from those countries, which do not want to see any progress on the UNSC reforms. But he stuck to his guns and put out the text in the 69th session of UN,” the source said. Accordingly, the text has positions of all member countries on different aspects of the UN reforms — how many members of UNSC should be there, what is going to happen to the veto powers, what should be the working method and so on. Now, the next step, according to Indian officials, will be for the 70th session to ratify the decision of the 69th session, which put out the negotiating text on the UNSC reforms. And then, go ahead with negotiations on each aspect of the reform. The Ministry of External Affairs is quite happy with the development, as was disclosed by its official spokesperson. “We welcome that after seven years, we have a text on the intergovernmental negotiations. happy with the development that we have a text on which substantive negotiations can actually begin,” said MEA’s official spokesperson Vikas Swarup.
