‘Very premature’ to comment on India getting a veto at UNSC: Jaishankar

India has been campaigning hard, including this past week, for a permanent seat on the Security Council

External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, who concluded a week-long visit to the United Nations, said it would be premature to comment on positions countries, including India, are taking on the issue of whether any permanent membership for India to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) came with veto power. The Minister was speaking to the Indian press at a briefing on Saturday afternoon.

 “So I think it’d be very premature to comment either on our own positions or other people’s positions at this stage,” the Minister said, adding that at this stage, the emphasis was on ensuring that there was some tangible basis to the negotiations.

 India has been campaigning hard, including this past week, for a permanent seat on the Council and currently all five permanent members (the P-5) of the world’s top security body have veto rights. While a number of countries have shown support for India’s membership, including the U.S. and Russia, the question remains open, if this comes with veto rights.

 “…The starting point is the need to accept that there should be reform and then the need to develop some kind of practical path towards it,” Mr. Jaishankar said in response to questions from The Hindu on the linkages between permanent membership and the veto.

At this stage the positions were not fixed and countries’ ideas would go into a “melting pot” before something emerges, the Minister said.

“It’s incredible that after so many years, there’s actually no text. So how does the negotiation advance if there is no text and no progress and no stock-taking?” Mr. Jaishankar said, adding, that India was advocating for text-based negotiations right now, to ensure that the intergovernmental negotiations (IGN) process — the principal framework via which UNSC reform is deliberated — was “serious”.

“I think there’s a growing appreciation of the need for that,” Mr. Jaishankar said. He alluded to references others had made on Security Council reform in their public remarks during the week, saying he sensed a shift in the mood on the longstanding issue that is raised every year and that others had told him they had sensed a shift too.