E-Paper
'No expansion in a hurry'
S.K. Singh, former Foreign Secretary of India and also India's representative at the UN on the ECOSOC, Human Rights Commission, UNIDO and the UNCTAD, analyses India's prospects for the Security Council and explains why the path to the permanent membership is a long one in an interview with Pragya Joshi.
What is the status of the Security Council enlargement with the view of the permanent seats on the SC?
At the end of the cold war around 1992, people started thinking that the SC membership had to be looked at and reviewed once again. Back then lots of people had lots of ideas and lots of discontent. By 1993, they had established an Open-Ended Committee to look at the whole issue.
This committee has been meeting every year and its summary of decisions or conclusions are bought up for a debate before the General Assembly each year. The membership of the United Nations General Assembly from 1955 until now has increased from roughly 51 to 191.
This means that the UN is a far more universal body today than when it had began. And the number of seats it used to have at the time of the Charter was eleven with five permanent and six non-permanent seats. This was expanded in 1964-65. I was one of the negotiators at that time, at a very junior level, though. However, the five permanent members with the veto powers were the ones that considered themselves the victors of the Second World War.
But at that time they did not take in either Japan or Germany because they were enemy nations. Partly the idea was that the Americans had suggested that both Japan and Germany be made permanent members. That was the genesis of this debate. And this is when the balance of power in the world had changed with the end of the Second world war and the end of the Cold war.
Once you started discussing this in the Open-ended committee it transpired that there were a plethora of issues of discontent with the members. And any form of consensus was difficult to achieve.
This is true for the General Assembly or just the Security Council?
Both. The idea was that the membership of the Security Council of the medium powers and the smaller powers should also be increased since most of them were developing powers.
Because SC in its constitution represents a great deal more of the interest of the developed powers than the developing powers. And these points were largely discussed. And developing countries consider themselves grossly under-represented.
But there are people who feel that criterion such a population, size of the economy, contribution to UN activities, contribution to UN peace-keeping operations and the potential of the strength and the stability of the countries concerned should be taken into account. But from all these angles elections and selection of the new permanent members should be based on global criterion.
This has emerged from the discussions and this should also be acceptable to the General Assembly. There should be no prior condition regarding `regional consensus' for developing countries. If somebody says what country should be suggested for permanent membership - its name should evolve through consensus within that region - that will never take place.
Does India even have a case to make for permanent membership and what are India's chances of gaining a seat on the Security Council?
I am not thinking of India, I am thinking of some kind of principle. What is not clear is which of these countries will be acceptable.
Most countries are unable to agree on the necessity or methodology of expansion and progress is therefore difficult in the near future. So I personally don't see an expansion to take place in a great hurry.
Since there are too many areas of perplexity, for example, between developing and developed nations and between smaller and larger powers. Also the weightages of the economic nature and that of the military nature or technology are important to realize. When you start thinking about these then you have to start thinking of the interplay of the relationship between the SC and the GA on the one hand and then Economic and Social Council on the other hand. You cannot also ignore that if you are taking a developing versus developed country position.
What is then India's case, how many times has it then come up?
It comes up every year, India itself in 1994, believed in proposing itself. We offered our candidature. People were a bit shook up but we did offer our candidature.
Did India face any opposition ? Or has any country come out in the open saying `no' to us?
Oh no no no. But behind the scenes Pakistan has said that they want a `consensus within the region' as a pre-condition for India joining. Informally they have been saying to others that since India has not totally obeyed the SC resolutions etc. etc. - it has no right to be considered for permanent membership.
