G4 Summit: Modi calls for a representative UNSC

A day after he pitched strongly for UN Security Council reforms, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today hosted a summit of G-4 countries - India, Brazil, Germany and Japan - that have taken the lead in pressing for the overhaul.

Addressing the G-4 meeting, Modi asserted that global challenges like climate change and sustainable development are the collective responsibility of all nations. He said it was also important to talk about climate justice.

"Our institutions, approaches, and often mindsets, reflect the wisdom of the century we have left behind, not the century we live in. This is especially true of the United Nations Security Council," the prime minister said in his opening remarks.

"The reform of the Security Council within a fixed time frame has become an urgent and important task," he said, while talking about the modern age challenges like trends in demography, urbanization and migrations.

"Climate change and terrorism are new concerns. Cyber and Space are entirely new frontiers of opportunities and challenges, he said.

The summit meeting with Germany chancellor Angela Merkel, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, which is in progress, is expected to formulate a collaborative strategy to negotiate UNSC reforms.

This is the first such summit after 2004 and comes after the UN General Assembly has resolved on a text-based negotiation on the Security Council's reform.

"We finally see some moment - the 69th session of General Assembly has taken a significant step forward to commence text based negotiations. This is just the first step. We should aim to take this process to its logical conclusion during the 70th session," Modi said while addressing the G4 countries.

Talking about G-4, he said, ''Our Group of four countries came together in 2004, bound by our shared commitment to global peace and prosperity, our faith in multilateralism and our willingness to assume our global responsibilities that the world expects from us.''

"I am delighted that we are meeting again as heads of government after ten years. We live in a fundamentally different world from the time the UN was born."

Modi pressed for UNSC reform within a "fixed timeframe" in the current session of the UNGA, saying the world body reflects the mindset of a century "we left behind" and is not in tune with new concerns like terrorism and climate change.

Modi also added that the UNSC "must include the world's largest democracies, major locomotives of the global economy, and voices from all the major continents" to carry "greater credibility and legitimacy".

In her remarks, Merkel said the G-4 was not any ''exclusive group'' and it believes in taking others also along in its pursuit of ensuring reform of the UNSC.

Abe, while terming the meeting as a ''golden opportunity'', said there was a ''mounting momentum for change'' and ''voices of great nations should be heard''.

Rousseff also underlined the need for urgent reform of the world body.

After the summit, Modi will travel to San Jose, California. He will visit Tesla Motors and will meet top officials of IT companies, including Tim Cook (Apple Inc.), Satya Nadella (Microsoft), Sundar Pichai (Google) and Shantanu Narayen (Adobe).

The prime minister will deliver an address at the Digital India and Digital Technology Dinner.