Count on the not so big powers, says Syed Akbaruddin
The Hindu
India should not put all eggs in one basket, says former UN envoy
Syed Akbaruddin was India’s Permanent Representative to the UN when India scored an unprecedented diplomatic victory in 2017 by defeating the U.K. for a seat on the International Court of Justice. India’s Dalveer Bhandari was elected a judge of the ICJ. Mr. Akbaruddin’s recent book ‘India vs UK: The Story of an Unprecedented Diplomatic Win’ is an account of the contest in which all five permanent members of the UNSC united against India.
Excerpts from the interview with Mr. Akbaruddin, who is currently Dean, Kautilya School of Public Policy, Hyderabad.
So yes, it took us a long time to decide whether we should contest or not. In fact, I would suggest that it took us almost 15 months or so before we even came to a conclusion that we should contest this election. And that was because never before in our own history, when a judge was elected for shorter than full term did India contest again. So that was one factor. The other factor was we were contesting many other elections at the same time, to the Law of the Seas Tribunal to the International Law Commission, etc, etc. and the general feeling in India was that the ICJ is a distant body. It has no direct implications for India’s national interest. Things changed after India decided to take Kulbhushan Jadhav case to the ICJ.