UNITED NATIONS: A handful of countries are using the Inter Governmental Negotiations (IGN) as a “smoke-screen” and stopping progress on reforming the Security Council, which has become “impaired”, India has said, asserting that it is time for a “decisive movement” to achieve the long-delayed reform of the powerful UN body.
India’s Permanent Representative to the UN, ambassador TS Tirumurti, speaking in the UN General Assembly on ‘Question of equitable representation and increase in the membership of the Security Council’, lamented that nothing has moved for more than a decade in the IGN except hearing passionate statements on the need for reform.
“Today’s Security Council is an impaired organ. It has been unable to act with credibility essentially due to its unrepresentative nature. But then, what is happening inside the IGN process, which we seem to be wedded to?” Tirumurti said on Monday.
Criticising the absence of even a single negotiating text, Tirumurti said that the IGN has become like a “platform for debate in a University rather than a serious result-oriented process in the United Nations consisting of sovereign member states”.
“And why have we come to this pass? Because just a handful of countries don’t want us to proceed. They have stopped the IGN from progressing. They are using the IGN as a smoke-screen to stop themselves from being identified by paying lip-service to Security Council reform.
“The conditions they are laying out are impossible to fulfill – which is a full consensus of all member states. Ironically, this is happening at a time when we were in a tearing hurry last week to give ourselves e-voting rights. But for IGN, they want no voting, leave alone e-voting, but only full consensus!” he said. —PTI

Press Trust of India