Brown supports India's bid for UNSC

L'Aquila (Italy), July 8 (ANI): India's bid to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council got a boost when British Prime Minister Gordon Brown expressed his support for New Delhi's demand to restructure the UNSC.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh held a bilateral meeting with his British counterpart in this Italian mountain town. The meeting lasted 45 minutes. Dr. Singh met Brown on the sidelines of the G-8-G-5 summit.

Sources said the two leaders discussed issues of bilateral and multilateral importance, besides areas where they could cooperate mutually, including terrorism.

They confirmed that both leaders discussed the current global economic meltdown.

On Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett had said, "India has become such an important and central part of the global infrastructure that just about everything that Britain wants to achieve internationally requires us to work in partnership with India."

India has again broached the subject of UNSC's expansion at the G-8 summit this year. In an article for he has written for The Vision of Emerging Powers - India, PM Manmohan Singh has said, "The Security Council has not changed at all and its present structure poses serious problems of legitimacy.

The system of two-tiered membership, which gives a veto to the five permanent members that is the nations that emerged victorious after the Second World War, is clearly anachronistic."

Singh is expected to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday, Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso and Angolan President Jose Eduardo Dos Santos on Friday.

An informal meeting with US President Barack Obama is also scheduled. (ANI)