Beijing, April 6 (Inditop.com) Ruling out a competitive relationship with Beijing, India Tuesday urged China to review its long-held positions and back New Delhi for a seat in the UN Security Council.
“Indeed, even on the complex issue of UN reform, it is perhaps time for China to review previously held positions and welcome the presence in the Security Council of a nation with which it has much in common,” External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna said at the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS), a Chinese think tank, in Beijing.
China has yet to declare its support for India in the UN Security Council and has tended to evade the issue by backing a bigger role for New Delhi in international affairs.
India is hoping that China will take the initiative to announce support for New Delhi’s candidature in the 60th year of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries.
Seeking to place India-China relationship in a larger global context, Krishna called for fashioning a global partnership between the two countries to democratise international decision-making bodies.
“Certainly, there is a strong case for a global issues partnership between India and China as two large developing Asian economies. We can work together on key challenges that will define the 21st century,” Krishna said.
Disapproving of competition between India and China, Krishna said the leaders of the two countries should refute such scenarios by concrete examples of cooperation.
“As rising powers, India and China are often projected to have a competitive relationship. In the final analysis, we all are what we want to be,” he said.
“It is up to us to disprove such scenarios, not through platitudes and wishful thinking, but by concrete examples of cooperation,” he stressed.
Krishna is currently on a four-day visit to Beijing during which he is expected to raise India’s key concerns over the recent Chinese practice of issuing of stapled visas to Indians from Jammu and Kashmir and Chinese construction activities in that state.
Krishna will hold wide-ranging talks with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi in Beijing and call on Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao Wednesday.
He will formally kick off the celebrations to mark the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between India and China at the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing with a play on Emperor Ashoka directed by Manipuri playwright Ratan Thiyam.
