External affairs minister S.M. Krishna’s outreach effort at the United Nations to introduce a sense of urgency to the text-based negotiations for the Security Council reform appears to have set the alarm bells ringing in China, which has balked at taking a position on India’s aspirations for a permanent UN Security Council seat.
On Saturday, Beijing hurriedly deployed its foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu to respond “to a relevant question”, which was diligently reported by Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency.
“Experience has proven that presetting results for the reform or forcing premature reform plans will not only undermine the unity of UN member nations, but also harm the reform process, which will not be in line with any party’s interests,” Mr Ma said, betraying Beijing’s discomfiture at being hustled into taking a firmer position on reform of the UN in general and UN Security Council in particular.
Mr Ma also said that UN member nations should seek a package of solutions for the reform, on the basis of broad and democratic consultation among member nations to accommodate interests and concerns of all parties.
The Chinese reaction came the day after Mr Krishna and his counterparts and representatives from the Group of Four (G-4; comprising India, Brazil, Germany and Japan) met in New York and issued a joint statement, reaffirming their agreement “to press ahead, with all necessary steps to achieve at the earliest an expansion in both the permanent and non-permanent membership categories of the Security Council.”
The Chinese spokesman’s remarks coincided with foreign secretary Nirupama Rao’s remarks in New York Saturday that China was not expressing itself openly in terms of India’s candidacy although she was hopeful that Beijing would not block India from getting a permanent UN Security Council seat when the matter came to a vote.
China is the only P5 (Permanent Five) member not to explicitly support India for a permanent UN Security Council seat.
Although the joint statement issued towards the end of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to India in December 2010 said that China understands and supports India’s aspiration to play a greater role in the United Nations, including in the Security Council, the growing support and urgency for the reforms seems to have caught Beijing by surprise.
Currently all 192 UN members are considering a five-page document, which is the latest proposal to come out of the text-based negotiations being chaired by Zahir Tanin, Afghanistan’s envoy to the UN.
On the margins of his participation in a UN Security Council debate on the “maintenance of international peace and security: interdependence between security and development”, Mr Krishna also met with his counterparts and officials from the “L69” group comprising 40 countries from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific; IBSA (an acronym for India, Brazil and South Africa); and UN General Assembly president Joseph Deiss, who is from Switzerland.

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Krishna calls Hillary, talks of her visit
New York, Feb. 13: External affairs minister S.M. Krishna and secretary of state Hillary Clinton on Sunday discussed bilateral ties and her upcoming visit to India for the next round of Indo-US strategic dialogue.
In a 15-minute telephonic conversation, they also talked about the Tri-Valley University Indian student issue and the recent events in Egypt, sources said.
Mr Krishna welcomed Ms Clinton in advance and said he looked forward to her visit to India. Clinton will come to India in April for the second round of the India-US strategic dialogue. —PTI