‘India has a bigger role to play in Security Council’

New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clarke, who is scheduled to visit New Delhi later this week for discussions with the Centre, today indicate...

New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clarke, who is scheduled to visit New Delhi later this week for discussions with the Centre, today indicated in Bangalore that she could see a substantially larger role for India in the enlarged United Nations Security Council.

‘‘We are working as one of the groups of countries led by Mexico — called ‘The Friends of UN Reforms’ — and what we are looking for is a change in the Security Council, which reflects the 21st century rather than 1945,’’ she ‘‘…We see a role for enhanced regional representation and we find it hard to see that India will

not have a bigger role,’’ she added.

Clarke’s five-day visit to India — the first by a New Zealand PM after David Lange’s visit in 1985 — is not just aimed at including the inking of a bilateral agreement between the two countries.

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‘‘We are presently negotiating an education cooperation agreement and hope it will then be the framework within which universities can start strategic partnering,’’ said Clarke.

The New Zealand PM added that she saw the visit as ‘‘a genuine effort by both countries to step up the 1950s relations’’, agreeing that both the countries had changed a lot and there were things that both could cooperatively engage in.

‘‘Sectors like information technology are where we can collaborate, but we still have some issues around agriculture access which must be pursued. We see a number of possibilities to freshen up the relationship,’’ added Clarke.