INVC NEWS
Tunisia,
The Vice President of India, Shri M. Hamid Ansari has said that any global forum which does not include India has limited relevance. He was addressing the Tunisian Institute of Strategic Studies in Tunis, Tunisia, today on the topic ‘India and the World’.
The Vice President said that as one sixth of the humanity and in keeping with the growing capacities and aspirations of our people, India has a much larger role to play in charting a more equitable and sustainable future for our world. Calling the 20th century a period of ‘‘Megadeath and Metamyth”, the Vice President said that although interstate conflicts have declined, the experience of the past quarter of a century shows that expectations of a more comprehensive corrective have been belied as the traditional security architecture has been slow to respond to these new realities. While emerging economies have secured a role in the global economic system, the Security Council of the United Nations remains a captive of its five Permanent Members, he added. Shri Ansari said that India is not a rejectionist power that stands outside the global order but that her interests lie in working to change reform and improve the global order, which demands increased external engagement within the ambit of a non-intrusive policy.
The Vice President said that India had vital stake in the stability, security and economic well-being of West Asia and North African region and was willing to expand its strategic and economic partnership. Flagging terrorism as an area of common concern, the Vice president said that even as some countries continued to use terrorism as an instrument of state policy, global terrorism had emerged as a principal global challenge and threat to pluralist and open societies. The Vice President said that International terrorism can only be defeated by organized international action, adding that we need to restructure the international legal framework such as by adopting a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism to deal with the challenges of terrorism. He also called for increased cooperation in intelligence sharing among societies that stand for peace and share values of humanism.
The Vice President said that relations between India and Tunisia have been friendly and free of discord and the countries share common principles and have a similar approach on many issued that he saw a prosperous and peaceful future as commercial and political interactions deepened.
