The Hindu : Front Page : U.K. to argue India’s case for Security Council seat

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Thursday, Sep 27, 2007
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U.K. to argue India’s case for Security Council seat

Hasan Suroor

David Miliband

LONDON: Britain will actively support the case for India to be given a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, Foreign Secretary David Miliband has said.

Mr. Miliband would raise the issue in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly later this week calling for U.N. reforms and expansion of the Security Council to find permanent seats for India, South Africa, Brazil and Japan.

In an interview to the BBC’s Newsnight programme on Tuesday, Mr. Miliband said U.K. believed that these countries had a “clear” and “strong” claim to be represented on the Security Council.

“We think very clearly that the South Africas of this world, the Brazils of this world, the Japans of this world and the Indias of this world have a clear claim,” he said.

Mr. Milliband said his speech would focus on “global inequalities” and argue that “one of the inequalities is about power.”

Bringing emerging powers like India on to the Security Council would be one way of removing such inequalities.

Speaking at the Labour Party’s annual conference in Bournemouth, he announced a “second wave” of British foreign policy in what was seen as an attempt by the Brown government to draw a line under the Blair era.

Mr. Miliband, who was a member of the former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s administration and once headed his policy unit in Downing Street, admitted that mistakes were made in Iraq and “lessons” needed to be learned.

One of the lessons was that there could be no military solutions to complex international issues and that good intentions were not enough.

‘Alienated Muslims’

Mr. Miliband acknowledged that Iraq had been “divisive” both for the Labour and the country and had alienated millions of Muslims around the world.

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