The administration of US President George W. Bush is looking to scrap a vestige of the Cold War, a half-century of acrimonious relations with India.
Already, however, US officials are signaling that India's prime minister, during his visit to Washington, will get a firm "no" for now to one of his country's top priorities -- a permanent seat on the key Security Council at the UN. The US, Russia, China, Britain and France now hold those spots.
Considering a litany of alleged mismanagement, corruption and other failings at the world body, US officials think an overhaul of UN operations must be under way before reshaping the Security Council can be considered.
Pressure around the meeting was eased somewhat Sunday when foreign ministers of populous India, Brazil, Germany and Japan said they would not seek a change in the council's makeup until the end of July while they negotiate with the 53-nation African Union.
Council membership was likely to be among few negatives to interfere with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's official visit that started yesterday with an elaborate arrival ceremony on the White House lawn, a meeting and news conference with President Bush and a gala dinner.
Administration officials say the pomp is designed to emphasize the growing importance to the US of India, a rising economic and military power whose newfound affinity for the US is considered by Bush to be a major success of his foreign policy.
India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was a founder of the Cold War's Nonaligned Movement, which Nehru considered a "third way" beyond what he considered the imperialism of both Western capitalism and Soviet-style communism. In practice it gravitated toward the latter, which often put India severely at odds with US policies.
The detente began 18 months ago with signing of the Next Steps in the Strategic Partnership accord. It laid out a path to bring the two democracies into a fully cooperative relationship in economic and military affairs, energy, the environment, space and technology and other matters. A military cooperation agreement was signed this year, and as many as 16 new cooperative arrangements are planned for the Singh visit.
For now, however, the UN question will be a difficult sell for the Indians.
"We believe very strongly that the larger issues of UN reform also have to be addressed; and if we have UN Security Council reform out of phase with the larger UN reforms, then we will not do justice to the organization," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told an Indian interviewer during the weekend.
After she spoke, the Bush administration made it even clearer. A senior official said that if the vote on expansion were now, the US would vote against its own position, stated last month, that endorsed an addition of "two or so" permanent members, one of them Japan, without veto power.
At a meeting in New York on Sunday, the foreign ministers of India, Japan, Germany and Brazil acknowledged they lacked the necessary two-thirds majority of the 191-member UN General Assembly for change without the backing of the African nations, which have their own proposal for reorganizing the Security Council.
REBUILDING: A researcher said that it might seem counterintuitive to start talking about reconstruction amid the war with Russia, but it is ‘actually an urgent priority’ Italy is hosting the fourth annual conference on rebuilding Ukraine even as Russia escalates its war, inviting political and business leaders to Rome to promote public-private partnerships on defense, mining, energy and other projects as uncertainty grows about the US’ commitment to Kyiv’s defense. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy were opening the meeting yesterday, which gets under way as Russia accelerated its aerial and ground attacks against Ukraine with another night of pounding missile and drone attacks on Kyiv. Italian organizers said that 100 official delegations were attending, as were 40 international organizations and development banks. There are
The tale of a middle-aged Chinese man, or “uncle,” who disguised himself as a woman to secretly film and share videos of his hookups with more than 1,000 men shook China’s social media, spurring fears for public health, privacy and marital fidelity. The hashtag “red uncle” was the top trending item on China’s popular microblog Sina Weibo yesterday, drawing at least 200 million views as users expressed incredulity and shock. The online posts told of how the man in the eastern city of Nanjing had lured 1,691 heterosexual men into sexual encounters at his home that he then recorded and distributed online. The
TARIFF ACTION: The US embassy said that the ‘political persecution’ against former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro disrespects the democratic traditions of the nation The US and Brazil on Wednesday escalated their row over US President Donald Trump’s support for former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, with Washington slapping a 50 percent tariff on one of its main steel suppliers. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva threatened to reciprocate. Trump has criticized the prosecution of Bolsonaro, who is on trial for allegedly plotting to cling on to power after losing 2022 elections to Lula. Brasilia on Wednesday summoned Washington’s top envoy to the country to explain an embassy statement describing Bolsonaro as a victim of “political persecution” — echoing Trump’s description of the treatment of Bolsonaro as
CEREMONY EXPECTED: Abdullah Ocalan said he believes in the power of politics and social peace, not weapons, and called on the group to put that into practice The jailed leader of a Kurdish militant group yesterday renewed a call for his fighters to lay down their arms, days before a symbolic disarmament ceremony is expected to take place as a first concrete step in a peace process with the Turkish state. In a seven-minute video message broadcast on pro-Kurdish Medya Haber’s YouTube channel, Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), said that the peace initiative had reached a stage that required practical steps. “It should be considered natural for you to publicly ensure the disarmament of the relevant groups in a way that addresses the expectations
RSS