New Delhi, November 3
The visiting Foreign Minister of United Kingdom, Ms Margaret Beckett, today made two suo motu important assurances which would be music to the ears of the Indian leadership.
Ms Beckett said that London supported New Delhi’s civil nuclear aspirations and that the UK would continue to push for India’s growing status to be fully reflected in the UN Security Council and other international organisations. There is no novelty or change in the UK’s stand on these two issues but in diplomacy reiteration of positive things is always welcomed.
On London’s support to New Delhi’s aspirations for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, Ms Beckett was
categoric. “We in the UK will continue to use our strong influence — in the European Union, in the United Nations, in the global economic institutions — to push for India’s growing status to be fully reflected in the UN Security Council and other international organisations.”
On civil nuclear energy, Ms Beckett said: “We support India’s civil nuclear aspirations. We also know that we will all need to work together to address the twin challenges of nuclear waste and nuclear proliferation,” she said while delivering a speech titled “UK and India: Partnering to meet Global Challenges”. The event was jointly hosted by TERI (The Energy Research Institute) and ICRIER (Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations).
She pointed out that recourse to alternate forms of energy was crucial to a country like India which had been importing oil worth more than $40 billion annually.
Ms Beckett commended Indian bio-diesel programme and said that India already had “one of the most developed biodiesel promotion programmes in the world”. She added that new highly efficient coal technology, if deployed, would enable India to increase energy efficiency, reduce the
cost of electricity and gain significant revenue from the sale of
carbon credits.
She made it a point to tell the audience that she had chosen India to be the first country in Asia for her visit and the India trip was the longest she had made thus far.
She spoke of the need for a globalisation of responsibility and stressed how the UK and India had been working together in such diverse fields as global trade, global terrorism and climate change. She pointed out this cooperation was a recognition that the challenges the world faced today were not ones that any country - however powerful - could overcome on its own.
“This will be a century in which we will have to define ourselves by what we hold in common, not by what divides us,” she remarked.
