Friday, April 22 2005 08:49 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Jakarta: India, a candidate for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council (UNSC), yesterday (Apr 21, 2005) rejected the rationale that new permanent members should not have veto power as External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh met Secretary General Kofi Annan in Jakarta.

Singh told Annan that the argument of evolving "consensus" for expansion could delay the process of revising the UN Charter or even result in that not taking place at all.

"There is a difficult task ahead of us to determine which formula of the Report of the UN Secretary General's High Panel would meet the needs of today," External Affairs Ministry spokesman quoted the Minister as having told Annan.

Noting that the current permanent members of the Security Council may not accept curtailment of their veto powers, Singh said that there was "no rationale to say that the new permanent members cannot have a similar veto power".

He asserted, "If two tiers were sought to be created within the UNSC, it would defeat the very objective of the democratisation of the UN body."

He referred to the statement by Russian President Vladimir Putin that India should be a permanent member of the UNSC with veto power and the statement of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Parliament that there should be no discrimination between existing permanent members and new permanent members.

Pointing out that multilateralism had failed to take precedence over unilateralism and the world body had had a "string of serious failures", the External Affairs Minister said, "One reason was because the permanent membership of the UN Security Council represents 1945 and not 2005."

Singh noted that the UN Charter had been amended only once in 60 years to expand the number of non-permanent members.