Prime Minister Manmohan Singh leaves on Wednesday for New York to attend the session of the UN General Assembly after a gap of three years so that his presence at the forum may impart focus and energy to this country’s bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, a key reform of the UN system that India seeks.
A meeting with the recently-elected Prime Minister of Nepal, Dr Baburam Bhattarai, and the just-appointed Prime Minister of Japan, Yoshihiko Noda, are high on the list of Dr Singh’s bilateral interactions. The Prime Minister is also slated to have a discussion with the leader of South Sudan, the world’s newest country.
In the recent period, among neighbouring countries, Dr Singh has had occasion to interact with the leaders of China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, but not Nepal, which is in a sensitive stage of its democratic process and with which India shares vital concerns.
The case for establishing contact with the Japan are self-evident, given the declining state of the world economy and the deep-going investment and trade ties between India and Japan, and the political interests articulated between the two in thecontext of the East Asia summit, whose next edition is to be held in November around the same time as the summit of the G-20 nations.
As for UN Security Council reforms, the open-ended discussion, which has been on for many years, has eventually made way for a negotiated text which has been piloted in the General Assembly, and also has an important group of co-sponsors. Work is now on for a shorter version of the text. India has a key role in narrow-focusing the text of the G-4 countries (India, Japan, Germany, and Brazil). Prime Minister Singh’s presence at the UNGA session is expected to lend fibre to this effort.
The proposed text should have the support of at least two thirds of the 192-member General Assembly, and all five veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council, to come into effect. Of the five, the US, UK, France, and Russia appear to be on board, but China is yet to fully declare its hand.