India and nations like Germany, Brazil and Japan are "absolutely needed" as permanent members of a reformed and enlarged UN Security Council to better reflect contemporary realities and the addition of these key members to the UN high-table is among France's "strategic" priorities, the French envoy to the UN has said.
India is at the forefront of efforts at the UN to push for the long-pending reform of the Security Council, emphasising that it rightly deserves a place at the UN high table as a permanent member.
"In terms of policy, France and Germany have strong policy which is to work together to enlarge the Security Council and to succeed in terms of the negotiations that should lead to the enlargement of the Security Council that we consider absolutely needed to better reflect the world as it is. There is no question about it, France's Permanent Representative to the UN Franois Delattre told reporters here last week.
Speaking along side German envoy to the UN Christoph Heusgen at the end of Germany's Presidency of the Council for April, Delattre emphasised that France considers that Germany, Japan, India, Brazil and a fair representation of Africa in particular are absolutely needed at the table to get towards a fairer representation of the Security Council. This is for us a matter of priority."
He underlined that Paris believes the enlargement of the Security Council with the addition of a few key members is "one of our strategic priorities."
Akbaruddin had said that while reform at the UN is a process rather than an event, there is no process known to us here that has traversed winding pathways in the manner as this process of the Reform of the Security Council."