UNSC reforms can't wait till cows come home: India

Saying that the credibility of the UN Security Council is at stake, India has sought a results-based timeline for reforms in the world organisation's supreme decision-making body to give it a more equitable representation globally.

"The exercise of UNSC reforms cannot be seen to be going on till the cows come home!" India's acting Permanent Representative Manjeev Singh Puri told the UN General Assembly Thursday, participating in a debate on increasing the council's membership.

"Recent developments around the world have increasingly put to question not just the representativeness, but also the credibility of the UN Security Council is at stake," he said. "And the clarion call for change is only growing louder by the day."

"All these are important tidings which cannot be ignored in our collective quest to achieve UNSC reforms," said Puri, asserting that a results-based time line was needed.

He suggested that 2015, marking the 70th anniversary of the UN as well as 10 years following the 2005 World Summit mandating early reforms of the Security Council, "will be an important occasion to deliver 'concrete outcomes' on this most pressing subject".

Puri hoped that the world organisation "can collectively work together in a constructive and forward looking manner, not just on the process but as well as on the substance, in the interim, so as to deliver on this long due mandate".

Presenting "a few 'myth busters' to set the record straight on some of the key issues that have been raised recently", the Indian representative said the UN needed to fulfill the mandate from heads of state in 2005 through the Millenium Summit.

"If we let the small yet vocal minority of 'counter aspirants to the aspirants' even scuttle this process forward, then we are failing in our obligation to deliver on that commitment," he declared.