India Thursday said it would not accept membership of the UN Security Council without veto power, as a high-level report suggested expanding the body without conceding the power to new members.
External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh told the Rajya Sabha: "Without a veto I do not think (membership of the Security Council) will be acceptable to the country."
Rejecting reports that India may get into the council without veto power, Singh told the upper house of parliament that media reports in this connection were "purely speculative".
Singh said New Delhi's views on the subject were well known and India was working with Japan, Brazil and Germany in this regard.
The report of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, submitted to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan Thursday, proposed enlarging the 15-nation Security Council to a 24-member body without veto power to new permanent members.
A second alternative suggested by the panel was to have eight states as a new class of members serving for four years each, with the possibility of their tenure being renewed.
They would include two countries each from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.
A statement jointly issued by India, Japan, Brazil and Germany, which together form a group called G-4, underplayed the panel report, merely welcoming it for having created new momentum in the debate about UN reforms.
"The expansion of both categories of Security Council membership, permanent and non-permanent, and the inclusion of developing countries in both will remedy today's structural shortcomings.
"This figures, inter alia, in the High-Level Panel report and will enable the Security Council to reflect today's realities," said the statement released by the external affairs ministry.
It said the four countries support "the call for a comprehensive approach" to take on interconnected threats to international peace and security.
"The international community needs to embrace this opportunity wholeheartedly to bring about the needed change...We believe in acting with the required attention and without artificial acceleration and delays," the statement said.
Stating that the expansion of the Security Council was an "extremely complicated issue with wide ramifications", Singh said New Delhi would wait for the report on UN reforms from Secretary General Annan.
"We will study the report. This issue is very much before the government. We will apply our mind," he said.
--Indo-Asian News Service