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Pakistan tries to kill India's UNSC bid

PTI | ByAditya Sinha, New York
Jul 03, 2005 12:25 PM IST

Indian diplomats say Pak has identified 120 or so nations that it hopes will back the Coffee Club, reports Aditya Sinha.

For the first time in 58 years, Pakistan has put Kashmir on the back-burner. And it’s not because of the “irreversible” peace process with India; rather, Islamabad is waging a diplomatic war to scuttle India’s bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

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India, Japan, Germany and Brazil (the G-4) have intensified lobbying for a resolution they are likely to table in the next fortnight for an expansion of the UNSC; they are racing against the September “deadline” set by Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Pakistan is one of the countries in the group known as Uniting for Consensus (UFC, and informally known as the Coffee Club). This group is opposing the G-4. Indian diplomats lobbying here say that Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry has identified 120 or so countries that it hopes will support the UFC.

Pakistan’s lobbying included the South summit at Doha on June 14-16, where Foreign Minister KM Kasuri tried to convince ministers to not support the G-4. Kasuri also lobbied 40 heads of government at the Organisation of Islamic Conference meeting in Yemen last week; his government is said to have drafted an OIC resolution saying any UNSC expansion must have the permanent presence of the OIC.

At this week’s African Union meeting in Libya, former President Farooq Leghari is being sent as a special envoy to rally support against the G-4. Another special envoy, Nasim Zehra, is going to Cuba, Canada, Costa Rica and Mexico. And Pakistan is lobbying the Netherlands, which is looking for a compromise that gives ten-year terms to new UNSC candidates instead of permanent membership.

The going is not all that easy for Pakistan, however: the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has decided to abstain from voting on the G-4 resolution; Pakistan had hoped the GCC would vote against. And it fears the African bloc might support the G-4 to protest the USA’s excluding their continent from consideration for a permanent seat (the US recently said it would support Japan and a “developing country”, i.e. India).

Islamabad is also unhappy with the recent US declaration. Ambassador Jehangir Karamat told US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice that not only did the criteria fit Pakistan as much as it did India, but that favouring India would negatively impact Pakistan.

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