US PRESIDENT Barack Obama yesterday gave his backing to India’s demand for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, fulfilling his hosts’ most fervent hope from the presidential trip.
“The just and sustainable international order that America seeks includes a UN that is efficient, effective, credible and legitimate,” Mr Obama said in an impressive speech to the Indian parliament that not only silenced his local critics but charmed many on the third and final day of his official visit.
“That is why I can say today that in the years ahead I look forward to a reformed UN Security Council which includes India as a permanent member,” he said to loud applause from an audience of hundreds of MPs and VIPs.
Mr Obama’s declaration does not mean that India will join the five permanent security council members any time soon but merely that the US is endorsing its candidature in light of proposed UN reforms that could take years to be implemented.
The US president cautioned India that with power came responsibility and that New Delhi would need to measure up should it attain a permanent seat.
Analysts took this to be mild criticism of India’s feeble human rights record and support for the repressive military junta in adjoining Burma (also known as Myanmar), and Iran, a potential nuclear rogue state.
Mr Obama has been sharply criticised for not directly castigating India’s nuclear rival Pakistan for its sponsorship of terrorism, especially the November 2008 three-day siege of Mumbai by 10 gunmen from Pakistan in which more than 160 people were killed.
There was vociferous clapping when the president in his address said that the US would “continue to insist to Pakistan’s leaders that terrorist safe-havens within their borders are unacceptable and that the terrorists behind the Mumbai attacks be brought to justice”.
“We must also recognise that all of us have an interest in both an Afghanistan and a Pakistan that is stable, prosperous and democratic – and none more so than India.”
Earlier, addressing a news conference along with prime minister Manmoham Singh, Mr Obama promised to co-operate closely with New Delhi to combat terrorism and offered to help India and Pakistan resolve their long-standing dispute over Kashmir without direct intervention from Washington.
“We are happy to play any role the parties think appropriate,” he said, adding that the US “cannot impose” a resolution to problems between the neighbours.
“Pakistan has actively been seeking US intervention on the 63-year-old Kashmir dispute, something India vociferously opposes.
Mr Obama also announced $10 billion (€7 billion) in business deals with India.
He won praise for saying that the US would relax the almost three- decade ban on transferring high-end technology in the military and space sectors, imposed after New Delhi’s nuclear tests in 1974.
The president said Washington would support India’s membership of four global nuclear non-proliferation organisations.
This move will reassure Delhi – which was excluded from them after its 1998 multiple nuclear tests – that the US was finally acknowledging its growing global clout.
“India is not emerging; it has emerged,” the US president declared, sealing the bilateral partnership.