India, 2006

At the outset, Madam,

let me join previous speakers in welcoming your

election as President of the General Assembly at its

sixty-first session. On India’s behalf, I would like to

assure you of our constructive support and

wholehearted commitment to work with you to achieve

both the larger goals of the Charter and the more

specific goals of the reform of this Organization that

were set out in last year’s World Summit Outcome

Document.

The topic of this general debate is “Implementing

a global partnership for development”. It is difficult to

contest its relevance or topicality. Today, whether we

look at issues such as international trade, international

financial mechanisms, methods to improve economic

and social well-being, or even the various threats to

peace and security that challenge our collective

existence, one common theme that emerges is the lack

of an effective and equitable global partnership. This is

an imperative even for achieving the Millennium

Development Goals.

The important annual report of the Secretary-

General highlights several successes in moving ahead

with United Nations reform. During the previous

General Assembly session, the Central Emergency

Response Fund, the Peacebuilding Commission and the

Human Rights Council were established, and the

United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy was

agreed upon. We have also gradually moved forward

on management and budgetary reforms. While these

are certainly important — indeed, critical — if we are

honest, we must acknowledge that significant

unfulfilled tasks and challenges lie ahead, particularly

with regard to unaddressed issues, including the reform

of the architecture of our multilateral bodies that

oversee security, trade, financial flows and

development. Without this reform, the discontent

associated with globalization will only deepen. Without

it, there cannot be substantially enhanced and assured

resource and technology flows to developing countries,

which are necessary for real economic transformation

and for achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

It is sometimes argued that private sector

investment is today replacing the traditional reliance

on aid and development assistance. While we

appreciate the important role of private sector

investment, it cannot replace public investment in

developing countries, whose absorptive capacities are

often limited and where the physical and social

infrastructure is often weak. Official development

assistance (ODA) remains an important means to

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augment public investment in areas such as human

capital development and rural infrastructure, which

rarely attract private sector investment.

The process of increasing the available pool of

resources for investment in the social and economic

infrastructure of developing countries can be promoted

at one level by developed countries, expeditiously

reaching the target of setting aside 0.7 per cent of their

gross domestic product for official development

assistance.

At another level, there is also a need to develop

innovative sources of financing. We must evolve a

broader understanding of ways to encourage the least

developed countries to get out of the debt trap by

extending debt-cancellation programmes, without

insisting on conditionalities, such as encouraging

privatization, which, applied indiscriminately, may

recreate the original difficulties that necessitated

recourse to debt in the first place.

The impasse in international trade negotiations is

disappointing, to say the least, considering the hopes

raised after the Hong Kong Ministerial Conference and

at the Group of Eight Summit in Saint Petersburg in

July. Early resumption is desirable, but adherence to

the existing mandate is imperative — the mandate of

the Doha Declaration, the July framework and the

Hong Kong Ministerial Declaration. When agriculture

was brought into the ambit of negotiations at the

creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the

developing countries were given a clear understanding

that trade-distorting agricultural subsidies would be

phased out in a time-bound manner. Minimizing the

vulnerabilities of poor farmers must be our collective

priority. Demanding market access from developing

countries, which displace low-income and subsistence

farmers to satisfy commercial interests, cannot be

supported.

Proportionately lower overall tariff reduction

commitments, operable, effective development

instruments for special products and a special

safeguard mechanism are essential if we are to ensure

food and livelihood security and meet the rural

development needs of developing countries. The

overarching principle of special and differential

treatment therefore remains a categorical imperative,

and is the underlying basis of the position of

developing countries.

In our view, there exists an overwhelming logic

for giving the United Nations a role in providing

direction to the comprehensive reform of the

international financial and trading systems. These

reforms must be aimed at building an international

architecture that reflects the realities of the twenty-first

century and is able to create an environment that

effectively supports national efforts to eradicate

poverty. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

have given hope to the poor and the underprivileged of

the world, and these goals are to be achieved by 2015.

In this context, the World Bank must remain steadfast

in its mission to build a world free of poverty, and its

strategy must remain embedded in the historical

development-centric approach.

The Outcome Document of last year’s World

Summit emphasized that enhancing the voice and

participation of developing countries in the Bretton

Woods institutions remains a continuous concern. The

bridging of this voice deficit requires fundamental

reforms in the quota structure which are long overdue

and absolutely necessary to enhance the credibility and

legitimacy of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The quota reforms have to begin with the revision of

the formula so as to reflect the relative economic

strengths of countries in the twenty-first century. The

United Nations should encourage immediate steps

being taken to initiate the second stage of IMF quota

reform, involving a basic revision of the quota formula

and the subsequent increase of quotas for all under-

represented countries. All of this must be done in a

time-bound manner.

Change is the law of life. The acute

dissatisfaction heard in many statements is the result of

institutions having been prevented from changing.

What is true in the economic field is equally true of the

architecture of our international security system as

reflected in this unique Organization that is supposed

to reflect the collective will of our world, a system

which remains mired in the past. Recent tragic events

in Lebanon and the stasis in the peace process in the

broader Middle East have highlighted the growing

failure of the institution designated by the Charter as

having primary responsibility for issues relating to

peace and security.

It is widely accepted that the Security Council

can no longer be regarded as reflecting the changed

international environment that has emerged since the

time of its creation. The Security Council must not

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only be more representative but also more effective if it

is to be able to satisfactorily perform the role mandated

to it by the Charter.

At the same time, the Security Council has

needlessly diverted its attention to issues and areas that

go beyond its mandate. For instance, the inclusion of

items on its agenda which have nothing to do with

peace and security represents an encroachment on the

roles mandated to other United Nations bodies. In

order to ensure that the international community

exercises real ownership of the process of securing our

world, it is essential that comprehensive reform of the

Security Council be undertaken and that its

membership be expanded in both the permanent and

the non-permanent categories. It is no accident that the

Secretary-General’s report refers to the enhancement of

legitimacy and the urgent need for reform to ensure the

Security Council’s relevance and credibility.

The revitalization of the General Assembly is

intertwined with the reform of the Security Council. It

is no coincidence that its reform too has long been

frustrated. A strengthened and more effective United

Nations presumes a revitalized General Assembly that

exercises its role and authority in the areas of

responsibility assigned to it by the Charter. These

include its effectively addressing topics such as

international law and human rights, financial,

budgetary and administrative matters, as well as the

global economic architecture and important issues

related to development.

I now turn to one of the most crucial issues of our

times: the problem of terrorism. While this

phenomenon has become increasingly global, our

collective response to it has remained rather

inadequate. The multiple ways in which terrorism

challenges the core principles of humanity and the

mandate of the United Nations are underlined by the

outrages perpetrated in India over the last few months.

Barely two months ago, on a single black day, more

than 200 lives were lost and more than 1,000 were

injured by dastardly bombings in Mumbai and

elsewhere in India. These and other such outrageous

incidents were clearly designed to spread maximum

terror among ordinary people. Ours is not the only

country to be singled out for vicious and senseless acts

of murder. A strong response to terrorism requires

broad-based international cooperation, denying to

terrorists the space that has been available to them and

increasing the capability of States to address terrorist

threats. It requires sustained and specific cooperation

by a variety of national, regional and global agencies.

Earlier this month, we joined in the adoption of

the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy

(resolution 60/288), even though, ideally, we would

have liked the United Nations to convey a far stronger

message in order to counter terrorism. We must

collectively and unanimously reject the notion that any

cause can justify terrorism. No cause can ever justify

the targeted killing of innocent men, women and

children. The international community must signal that

it will no longer tolerate the actions of the sponsors

and abettors of terrorism, including States which

wilfully fail to prevent terrorists from utilizing their

territory. We hope that the Strategy will provide the

impetus to unite the international community in its

fight against terrorism via practical measures that

facilitate cooperation by way of extradition,

prosecution, information exchange and capacity-

building.

We went along with the Global Counter-

Terrorism Strategy, but the comprehensive convention

on international terrorism, which remains a work in

progress, would have provided the requisite legal

framework upon which a counter-terrorism strategy

could have been based. It cannot be beyond our

collective ingenuity to reach an agreement on such a

comprehensive convention, even though we have

missed the target of doing so at the sixtieth session of

the General Assembly. We must work together to

finalize and adopt the comprehensive convention, at

least during this session of the General Assembly.

The existence of nuclear weapons continues to

threaten international peace and security. In our view,

the best non-proliferation measure is universal

disarmament, and the international community needs to

take immediate steps to eliminate the threat of the use

of nuclear weapons. We have to revive momentum for

achieving what the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi

called a nuclear-weapon-free and non-violent world, to

be achieved, through negotiations, in a time-bound

manner. India will be presenting a working paper at

this session of the General Assembly on the issue of

nuclear disarmament, on which we look forward to

working with Member States.

In recent years, new dangers have emerged due to

the threat of proliferation of weapons of mass

destruction-related materials and technologies to non-

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State actors and terrorist groups. The international

community must work together to meet those

challenges. India’s record in that regard is impeccable,

and we have instituted effective measures to ensure

that the technologies we develop are not leaked in any

way.

It is true that the developing countries bear the

heaviest burden from pandemics, epidemics and

chronic diseases. The scourge of HIV/AIDS, malaria,

avian influenza and tuberculosis seriously threatens the

future of many developing countries by robbing them

of the most productive segment of their society — their

young people — thereby affecting the future of those

countries. An enhanced global collaborative effort is

called for to confront the proliferation of challenges

affecting the lives of the majority of our citizens.

We also need to address the central issue of the

special needs of the developing countries, especially in

Africa, and of the vulnerable small States. On our part,

we will continue to expand our programme of South-

South cooperation also through the New Partnership

for Africa’s Development, through Team 9 — our

special programme for West African countries — and

by means of the connectivity mission in Africa, as well

as through assistance, capacity-building and

technology transfer aimed at reducing the vulnerability

of small States.

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who embodied

our commitment to the United Nations ideals, said that

“in a world of incessant and feverish activity,

men have little time to think, much less to

consider ideals and objectives. Yet, how are we to

act, even in the present, unless we know which

way we are going and what our objectives are?”

Confronted as we are by the globalization of

threats and by the limitations of our international

system to address such challenges, the need for a

comprehensive reform of the United Nations has never

been more imperative. We need to enfranchise the

United Nations to meet the challenges of our time by

reinforcing its role and authority as the core of real

multilateralism.

We look forward to working closely with other

Member States, under your leadership, Madam

President, to press ahead with essential reforms at the

United Nations and to implement an effective global

partnership for development that encompasses

everyone and enables every individual to live a life of

dignity in a clean, safe and healthy environment.