Canadian High Commissioner for India in UNSC

Shimla, May 20 (UNI) In a significant statement, Canadian High Commissioner to India Dr David M Malone today expressed the hope that India will soon get a Permanent Seat in the United Nations Security Council(UNSC).

" The next bid to enlarge the UNSC will be a more concerted one", he said while speaking at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, here on the 'Evolving Institutional Architecture for International Relations In The 21st Century', with a focus on UN Security Council.

He said the development of international diplomacy and the working of the United Nations and its Security Council have proven that the idea of absolute sovereignty of nation states was on the wane.

''It certainly isn't as absolute as it once was. We rather see the individual increasingly emerging as the unit of exchange in international relations,'' Dr Malone said, underlining the fact that the world had seen even Heads of State being hauled up for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Earlier, Dr Peter Ronald deSouza, Director of the IIAS in his welcoming remarks, described Dr Malone as ''not just a career diplomat but a scholar in his own right'' who has written six books largely focussed on global issues, including the war in Iraq. Dr deSouza said the High Commissioner was certainly more than an ''occasional academic'', as some have often described him.

Dr Malone said the last concerted bid to expand the UNSC by the inclusion of India, Brazil, Germany and Japan perhaps failed because the effort to court the UN General Assembly members was lacking. ''Also, the larger argument that it was time to open up the UNSC to developing countries did not work because two of the countries were advanced industrial economies,'' he said.

Digging into the history of the United Nations and its role, Dr Malone said there certainly have been phases in history when the good intentions expressed by the United Nations Security Council have proven to be mere ''vacuities not backed by strong action'' but nevertheless there were many success stories also.

He counted Bosnia and Somalia as the sad chapters but said the two important International Crime Tribunals in case of Yugoslavia and Rwanda set up under the aegis of the UN have shown that even Heads of State can be held accountable. ''Kosovo is a different case...with its own peculiarities...and is now in a state of international limbo,'' he said.

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