India & Japan seek to make UN structure more contemporary: EAM Jaishankar

TOKYO: Asserting that India and Japan are powers central to Asia's multipolarity, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Thursday that the two countries seek to make the UN structure more contemporary for the balance to remain in favour of freedom, transparency, and a rules-based order. Jaishankar, who is in Tokyo for the second leg of his four-day visit to South Korea and Japan, also said that the world will watch how the two nations support each other in the shared goal through various relationships and initiatives.

Addressing the first Raisina Roundtable here, the minister called the United Nations the "most universal expression of global" while underlining the need for reform in the global organisation.

The UN's "reform is of paramount importance. As fellow members of the G4 grouping, India and Japan seek to make the UN structures more contemporary," he said.

"This is clearly an uphill task, but one in which we must persevere as two powers that are so central to multipolarity in Asia. It is also in our common interest that the overall balance remains in favour of freedom, openness, transparency, and a rules-based order," Jaishankar said.

There has been a growing demand to increase the number of permanent members in the Security Council to reflect the contemporary global reality with India, Brazil, South Africa, Germany and Japan being strong contenders.

Jaishankar said that India and Japan have to confront the prospect that the world is now more volatile, uncertain, unpredictable and open-ended.

He said that countries have to do that from the "national perspectives as well as from the point of view of their own relationship".

Jaishankar pointed out that it has become much more challenging to reach a consensus between more players on the global stage, given the disorder in the world, as they do not agree on intersecting positions.

"What we see in multilateralism, especially the UN, is both an expression of this as well as a cause," he said, adding that, resultantly, countries are turning increasingly to like-minded partners who gather together for a particular purpose.

India and Japan are natural partners in a world headed towards "re-globalisation", he said, asserting that the two nations also share basic affinities, being democracies and market economies.

The Raisina Roundtable is a key step towards enhancing track 2 exchanges between India and Japan, the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi said in a statement ahead of Jaishankar's visit.

Jaishankar's visit and meetings in Tokyo will provide strategic guidance to India's functional cooperation in various areas, impart further momentum to bilateral exchanges, and set the agenda for future cooperation, it said.