Chennai: United Kingdom was looking forward to India emerging as an important player in world politics, Lord Swraj Paul said today (Jan 2, 2004).

Recalling the British Premier Tony Blair's strong advocacy for India's claim for a permanent membership in the United Nations Security Council, Lord Paul, UK's business ambassador, told a meeting with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) members in Chennai that this was an acknowledgement of the important role India will play in the coming decades.

Referring to Indo-Pak relations, he said that UK believed that Indian Prime Minister A B Vajpayee and his Pakistani counterpart General Musharraf were the best leaders to find a solution to the vexed Kashmir issue.

"We firmly believe that they are the best people capable of finding a solution to the issue despite the fact that there are suspicions to the contrary," he said.

However, a solution to a 50-year-old problem like Kashmir was not that easy, he said, quoting the age-old Ireland issue for which a solution was yet to be found.

Stressing that India needs to lift itself up to emerge as a developed nation from a developing nation on its own strengths, Lord Paul said it was a wrong notion that India could become developed just on financial and industrial credentials.

To be a part of the developed world, India need to pay more attention to providing safe drinking water, elementary health care facilities, supply of power and education to all among other things, he said.

Pointing out that Government ownership hinders productivity, he said India should move quickly along the path of more privatisation and attract more foreign investment in infrastructure and energy projects.

He said India's debt and fiscal parameters were worrying, adding that this has to be addressed in order to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow.

Pointing out that the ongoing industrial modernisation programmes and Governmental reforms, which began in 1992 were encouraging new entrepreneurs, he said that fortunately, India's economic success was not monopolised by a few wealthy oligarchs, as it was in the past.

"Now almost all the big business names are new faces that we had scarcely heard of a few years ago," he added.