In Ghana, President Mukherjee calls for UN reforms

Accra (Ghana), June 13 (IANS) President Pranab Muhkherjee on Monday said the United Nations should be reformed to keep pace with world developments and pitched for India's candidature for permanent seat on the Security Council.

He said it was so because with India's size and civilizational depth, the country cannot remain to "be watching from the sidelines as the Security Council dispenses solutions to global issues".

Similarly, President Mukherjee said, "the continent of Africa of over a billion people cannot be bystanders while its fate is defined".

Addressing the students of the University of Ghana as part of his two-day visit to the country, he said: "Reform and change of the United Nations is inevitable and the youth should be at the vanguard of this call for change."

"Outdated structures cannot resolve problems of today," the visiting president said, adding that "positive transformation cannot be brought about by archaic systems and concepts".

"The United Nations established in the wake of the Second World War cannot effectively respond to the evolving international challenges that we face today," he said.

President Mukherjee said the growth of India into a robust and a confident nation is not an overnight phenomenon, adding that it took "decades of toil and the sacrifices of our leaders and strengthened by the momentum generated by hundreds of thousands of students and scholars".

"It is their innovations, discoveries, rock-solid determination and self-belief, and more importantly a burning desire to serve the nation, which has contributed to India's success," he said.

President Mukherjee said after Independence, India did not "follow blindly the models of development that might have been successful elsewhere".

"We recognised that natural and financial resources were only one side of the coin of development," he said, adding that "the other side is the quality of human resource that alone can transform the natural resources into prosperity and happiness of the people".

President Mukherjee leaves Accra to Cote d'Ivoire on Tuesday on the second leg of his three-nation African tour which will also take him to Namibia.

(Francis Kokutse can be reached at [email protected])

--IANS

francis/tsb