India Calls For Text Negotiations For UNSC Reform By 2015

NEW YORK: Describing the unreformed UN Security Council as a "seriously impaired organ," India has emphasized the urgent need to achieve reform of the powerful body by next year, saying a text should be tabled to begin "actual negotiations" on its reform and expansion.

Highlighting the shortfalls of an unreformed Security Council, India's Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Asoke Mukerji said that even in the area of its core competence, the 15-nation body is unable to act with credibility essentially due to its unrepresentative nature.

"The Council, which has the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, is today a seriously impaired organ. The litany of crises dotting the international landscape, involving the lives of millions of people, which the Council does not have the will or there sources to address, demonstrates this vividly," Mukerji said here yesterday in a General Assembly session on 'Equitable Representation and Increase in Security Council Membership'.

Mukerji said a text would provide a "refreshing contrast" to all previous rounds of the process so far where "we must be the only forum in the United Nations to be negotiating without actually having a negotiating text on the table before us".

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