France bats for UNSC seat for India

UNITED NATIONS: India and nations like Germany, Brazil and Japan are "absolutely needed" as permanent members of a reformed and enlarged UN security council to better reflect contemporary realities and the addition of these key members to the UN hightable is among France's "strategic" priorities, the French envoy to the UN has said.
India is at the forefront of efforts at the UN to push for the long-pending reform of the security council, emphasising that it rightly deserves a place at the UN high table as a permanent member.
"In terms of policy, France and Germany have strong policy which is to work together to enlarge the security council and to succeed in terms of the negotiations that should lead to the enlargement of the security council that we consider absolutely needed to better reflect the world as it is," France's permanent representative to the UN Francois Delattre told reporters here last week.
Speaking along side German envoy to the UN Christoph Heusgen at the end of Germany's Presidency of the Council for April, Delattre said France considers that "Germany, Japan, India, Brazil and a fair representation of Africa in particular are absolutely needed at the table to get towards a fairer representation. This is... a matter of priority." He underlined that Paris believes the enlargement of the UNSC with the addition of a few key members is "one of our strategic priorities."
India's permanent representative to the UN ambassador Syed Akbaruddin, had said earlier this year on the issue of 'Categories of Membership' that more than 90% of the written submissions in the Framework Document are in favour of expansion in both categories of membership specified in the Charter."
France has maintained that if the crises of recent times have confirmed the centrality of the UN, they have also reinforced the need to make the organisation more representative of the current balances in the world."That is why France pushes for the expansion of the security council by supporting the accession to a permanent seat of Germany, Brazil, India, Japan, as well as a greater presence of African countries," according to the permanent mission of France.