Security Council seat will follow after UN reforms: Pranab

Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday expressed the hope that India will get a permanent place in the UN Security Council whenever reforms of the international body and its expansion take place.

"So far as the Security Council permanent membership is concerned, I do hope as and when the expanded Security Council along with the general reforms of the United Nations takes place India's claim for being the permanent member of the council would be considered and accepted," Mukherjee said while responding to a question on India's chances in the expanded Security Council at the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington, where he is on a visit.

Early this week, India rebutted a media report that Washington has linked the UN Security Council permanent seat to the resolution of the Kashmir issue. On Wednesday, a report said that Obama would be carrying the message on his visit to India in November that settling the Kashmir issue is the key to get a permanent seat at the powerful wing of the world body.

Dismissing such reports, official sources said that India was eminently qualified to become a UNSC permanent member and there was no possible link with the Kashmir issue."There cannot be any possible links. These are very different issues," Indian official sources said, dismissing the reports as speculative.

In New York, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao recently said that while the US is not fully sold on the idea of India becoming a permanent member of the UN Security Council, there has been positive movement in that direction."I'm not saying we have reached the destination of full American support for our case but certainly we are moving from divergence to greater convergence," she had said.

Early this month, India's national security advisor Shivshankar Menon had said in Washington that things are moving in the right direction for the country to get a permanent seat at the UN Security Council.