Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: India has called for discrediting those opposing the expansion of the permanent membership of the Security Council and denying Africa’s rightful place.
“Those who continue to deny the expansion of permanent category and Africa’s rightful place in it must be called out,” R. Ravindra, the charge d’affaires of India’s UN Mission said on August 21. “Africa’s continued denial of representation in the permanent category of membership is a blot on the collective credibility of this council,” he said at the High-Level Open Debate on Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace convened by Sierra Leone, the Council’s president.
India has always called for permanent African representation in an expanded Council and supports the African consensus demanding two permanent seats and increasing the elected seats for the continent from three to five, Ravindra said.
He pointed out that nearly 70 per cent of the Council’s mandates for peacekeeping are for Africa.
Reforming the Council, an endeavour blocked for nearly a couple of decades is seeing a renewed push from African nations demanding action in time for the 80th anniversary of the UN’s founding next year.
A 12-member group, Uniting for Consensus, has used procedural manoeuvres to prevent the reform process from advancing because of opposition to certain countries getting permanent seats. The group is led by Italy and includes Pakistan and Canada.
Ravindra dismissed with contempt an attempt by Pakistan’s Permanent Representative Munir Akram to raise the Kashmir issue and tie it to the Palestine issue.
“We earlier heard a delegation repeating again its falsehood about my country. I will not dignify this falsehood with a response in the interest of time. Such remarks deserve nothing but contemptuous dismissal,” he said.
Ravindra did not mention Pakistan by name as that would have given it an opportunity to turn its right of reply into a megaphone for propaganda.But the message was clear that he was referring to Akram, who had said, “The consequences of foreign occupation are nowhere as clear as in occupied Jammu and Kashmir and in Palestine”.
