India has reaffirmed that new permanent members in a reformed Security Council must get veto power but suggested that its use be deferred to a review conference as “a willingness for compromise”.
“Our own national position has been and remains that the veto should as long as
it exists be extended to new permanent members,” India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin said.
“As a measure of flexibility and willingness for compromise, the use of the veto can be deferred till the Review Conference. The African Union (and this is understandable) does not wish to defer use. The difference, we see, as one of a degree than one of a kind,” he said.
A review conference is a platform provided by the UN Charter for the member states to discuss changes to any reforms achieved in the near-term, and for revisiting negotiables that cannot be agreed upon. India has in the past also said that it would consider deferring the use of the veto until a future scheduled review conference.
Given the hard lines among member states on the use of the veto and differences among them over the issue, Akbaruddin asserted that the issue of veto cannot be allowed to block the process of Security Council reform itself.
“The issue of veto is important but then we cannot also allow the veto to have a veto over the process of Council reform itself,” he said during the informal plenary meeting of the Inter-Governmental Negotiations (IGN) on ‘Question of Veto’.
Akbaruddin appealed to the chair of the IGN to consolidate the negotiating text on the basis of convergence reached on issues so far while also delineating the divergence and the contrarian view of some. He stressed that that chair should ask member states to build further on the consolidated and shortened text.