INDIA: Britain backs India's bid for permanent seat in UN Security Council
- 00:01:52
- ITN Source
INDIA: Britain backs India's bid for permanent seat in UN Security Council
Supporting India's bid for a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council, visiting British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said on Thursday (November 02) both countries were 'natural partners' and had to jointly face several global issues. Beckett, who is on a six-day visit to India beginning Thursday, said Britain has been at the forefront in supporting India's candidature. "We see India as very much an important and powerful country with a strong emerging economy. The UK has, as I hope you all know, been at the forefront of course to India to have a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council and we were very keen to take the step of inviting India to take part in the G8 meetings at Gleneagles last year," Beckett said at a joint news conference with Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee in New Delhi. "We see our two countries as natural partners as we look even beyond the bilateral relationship and to the global issues that face all of us," added Beckett. The G4 nations which comprises India, Japan, Germany and Brazil had pitched in a campaign for expansion of the U.N. Security Council. Beckett also said India and the UK were committed to fight the scourge of terrorism together. "First of all, on the issue of counter-terrorism - there are the obvious things - our shared concerns, shared flow of information and so on but also very concretely we have people working, for example, with the relevant authorities in India to help prepare, as we all are having to trying to do, for greater protection in attacks on mass transit infrastructure so there are some concrete ways here in which we are sharing our very unfortunate and tragic joint experiences and trying to learn from each other's experience," she said. India, during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's recent visit, and Britain had agreed to cooperate in combating terrorism. Britain had sent a team to seek more details from Indian police on the bomb blasts in July on suburban trains in Mumbai, which had several similarities with the blasts on London suburban trains a year ago.
ITN Source | November 2, 2006
