India calls for UN Security Council reforms this year

UNITED NATIONS: India has called for an urgent action to reform the UN Security Council this year, arguing the most-powerful body of the United Nations itself embodies the undemocratic stranglehold of the privileges of a few, forged by a wartime alliance that no longer exists.

"It is ironical that calls for democracy and the rule of law are being made in a Council that itself embodies the undemocratic stranglehold of the privileges of a few, forged by a wartime alliance that no longer exists," the Indian Ambassador to the UN Ashoke Kumar Mukerji said yesterday.

"The logic of democracy and the anguished faces of human suffering across the world call for urgent action to reform the Council. We must do so this year if we are to learn the right lessons from history," Mukerji said in his address to an open meeting of the UN Security Council on Maintenance of International Peace and Security.

India, the world's largest democratic country, top economic and world power is a rightful claimant to the a permanent seat in the UN Security Council.

Almost all the veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council - the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China have supported India's place in this most powerful wing of the United Nations.

In his remarks, Mukerji said the Security Council has taken the lead in referring to the purposes and principles of the Charter while attempting to maintain international peace and security.

"It is a matter of concern for us, who are not privileged to sit permanently in the Council that the Council's invocation of these purposes and principles appear selective, to suit the national interests of powerful member states," he said.

"The Council's decisions on issues not directly linked with maintaining international peace and security cannot encroach upon the jurisdiction of the General Assembly, where all of us are equally represented," Mukherji said.