India succumbs to the pressure: accepts bidding for non-permanent seat in the UNO after a decade

By Akhilesh Suman
New Delhi
Silently and to some extent clandestinely, India has changed its policy towards bidding for permanent seat of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and has decided to join non-permanent seat in the world’s topmost body.
The election of the non-permanent members of the UNSC will take place in October, 2010 and India is lobbying the world country to get a seat in virtually a “musical chair” group that gets irrelevant in two years time.
In 2000, during the NDA regime, India had decided not to “beg” for non-permanent seat of the UNO and started endeavours for permanent seat.
“It was like a moral pressure on the members of the world body, especially, on the the USA and the Chinese who were blatantly opposed India’s candidature,” a senior official in the Ministry of External Affairs said.
“Now US and the Chinese will support us for the non-permanent seat and our deserved place will go to the real backburner,” the official averred.
India had made a group of like-minded countries who too deserved to get permanent seat in the UNSC so that the world most powerful body might reflect global political reality. These countries of this group were India, Japan, Germany, Brazil and South Africa.
These countries pitched hard and could have made the world body ready, if USA and China had not rejected India’s natural ambition in this situation. At that point of time Pakistan too had been lobbying hard so that India does not get the chance to enter in the UNSC.
Interestingly, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh came to power, he just abandoned the idea of the permanent membership of the world body and sources in the government said that strong instruction was given from the PMO to the Ministry of External Affairs not to raise the issue of permanent membership at any forum.
Even the Group of the aspirant countries was virtually dismantled. USA come out in open support of the Japan’s bid for the permanent seat, but even Geroge Bush with whom Manmohan Singh was considered to be very close did not back India, ostensibly in pressure from Pakistan and also on terms close to the chest of the world’s sole superpower.
“What US and China are telling today, had been telling for last one decade, there is nothing new in the assurance. But the way we considered bidding for non permanent seat in the UNSC, we have succumbed to the desires of the USA and China and the process of expansion of Permanent Seat is further delayed in complex delaying tactics,” observers feel.