Indian ambassador examines U.N.

Vijay Nambiar, India's permanent representative to the United Nations, called for an expansion of the U.N. Security Council to include more countries from Asia, Africa and South America in a campus lecture Sunday afternoon.\nUnless more countries from the developing world join the Security Council, the international organization's actions will be seen as increasingly illegitimate, Nambiar said.\nHe said India's democracy, history and military capability would make the country a natural choice for permanent membership on the Security Council.\nNambiar spoke to an audience of about 100 students, faculty and others in Myers Hall. He was invited to speak by the India Studies Program in cooperation with the Office of the Bloomington chancellor and the College of Arts and Sciences.\nThe ambassador said if India joined the council as a permanent member, it would be a radical change for both the United Nations and India's foreign policy. An expansion of the Security Council would repair the U.N.'s image in the developing world, Nambiar said.\n"Today the council is clearly unrepresentative," he said.\nPermanent members exercise unilateral vetoes over the Security Council's decisions. Currently only five countries -- the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Russia and France, collectively known as the "P5" -- hold permanent seats on the council. \nIn Nambiar's view, it is only an "accident of history" that India was not a permanent member from the U.N.'s founding. India and Pakistan received their independence from the United Kingdom in 1947.\n"The argument that was adduced was that India was not yet an independent country," Nambiar said. "By the time this disability was removed, the Cold War had already set in."\nCold War tensions ruled out any chance of a change to the Security Council's membership as the United States and the Soviet Union both tried to bolster their own positions within the U.N., Nambiar explained.\nBut the Cold War ended in 1991. And since August 1994, India has been pressing for Security Council reform, including permanent member status for itself and other countries. \nNambiar said reform is needed because many non-Western observers believe the U.N. follows the United States' lead on international affairs.\n"In the context of the Aug. 19 attack on the U.N. compound in Baghdad, the legitimacy of the U.N. has come into question," Nambiar said. "To an Iraqi, irrespective of his opposition to the Saddam Hussein regime or not, he perceives the U.N. as complicit in the years of sanctions against the Iraqi people."\nHowever, there are obstacles to India's goal. Nambiar said the most significant was "getting the approval of the P5."\nProfessor Sumit Ganguly, director of the India Studies Program, explained the P5's views on India's quest.\n"To my knowledge both France and Russia have supported India's claim to a Security Council seat," Ganguly said. "The United States remains publicly noncommittal and privately opposed. China, which sees India as an upstart in Asia, would probably object. Britain would simply follow the lead of the United States."\nThe Bush administration, however, has proved more accommodating than some observers might expect, Ganguly said.\n"There are people in the State Department that have told me that they don't think India is ready for prime time," Ganguly said. "On the other hand, this administration of all administrations, which is not exactly committed to multilateralism, has been much more interested in India. Because of its interests toward India, it may be more sympathetic."\nGanguly said Washington has returned India's advances. "They see India as a potential great power," he said. "Because it's a potential great power, we work with it."\nSowmya Ravikumar, a graduate student in the IU School of Optometry, attended the lecture. \n"I thought it was good," Ravikumar said. "It was long overdue for a sleepy town like Bloomington to have political speeches. IU has gained some influence because of this."\nDuring the lecture, Ravikumar asked Nambiar about India's relatively low-profile opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq earlier this year.\n"We haven't carried the flag, which perhaps fifteen or twenty years ago we would have done as leaders of the non-aligned movement," Nambiar responded. "We are making a more pragmatic calculation."\nToo much opposition to the United States would jeopardize India's other foreign policy goals, he said.\nIn an interview after his speech, Nambiar said India would pursue a mix of pragmatic and idealistic policies if it became a permanent member state. \n"You can't contemplate the absence of a moral compass," Nambiar said. "To be subjected to the criticism that there is no moral concept for a foreign policy would seriously dent the self-image of a country like India."\nIndia, a declared nuclear weapons state, would work for nuclear nonproliferation on the council, but it does not believe that contemporary efforts toward nuclear disarmament are fair, Nambiar said.\n"The current Non-Proliferation Treaty is flawed because it is discriminatory (in favor of the P5)," Nambiar said. \nIndia has not signed the NPT, because doing so would require dismantling its nuclear arsenal and opening its nuclear facilities to international inspections, Ganguly said.\n"Under the terms of the NPT you cannot possess nuclear weapons if you did not possess nuclear weapons before Jan. 1, 1970. That was when the treaty entered into force," Ganguly said. \nNambiar insisted that nonproliferation would have to include more guarantees from nuclear weapons states, such as the P5, to give up their weapons than the NPT requires today.\n-- Contact staff writer Paul Musgrave at rpmusgra@indiana.edu.