All that India needs to do is sit tightÃ?AMERICA'S decision to back permanent membership for three developing countries in an expanded United Nations Security Council which would have Germany and Japan as new permanent members is a happy, if fully expected, step. Anxious to get Germany and Japan to do their financial bit for a UN to which it owes huge sums of money, America knows it cannot get them on board without tolerating the entry of some others.Actually, the American opposition has been not to more permanent seats but to an expanded Security Council with more than 21 seats which, it says, would make it so clumsy as to be ineffective. Since the Security Council already has 15 seats, five new permanent members would already make it touch the limit of seats that the US is willing to see.That means no more non-permanent members. Since the expansion of the Security Council has long come to be seen as an exercise in ambition for countries big and small, the American nod does not necessarily boost the prospects of an early expansion. Unless America's considerable powers of persuasion can make smaller countries with ambitions of non-permanent seats in an expanded council change their minds.The Indian response has been a sensible, and sensibly muted, one: that non-permanent seats should be expanded as well. It combines enlightened self-interest with virtue and should stand it in good stead in the event of voting on permanent members, as proposed by the UN General Assembly president and backed by the US.The fact of the matter is that unless the genuine claims of membership can be satisfied, Security Council expansion will not happen. Even if America were to give it all it has, it would still be doubtful.India, with less than scintillating, but respectable enough, credentials for permanent membership has so far played rather well its part in the game of Security Council expansion. Its aim is very simple, and it involves a two-pronged strategy. It is that when the bus for permanent membership leaves - and the US would have liked to drive away with Germany and Japan it should be on it.The first part of the strategy to this end is to behave in a way that would improve its claim to boarding the bus. The second, in the event that it cannot be on it, is to ensure that the bus does not leave till India is good and ready. So India is a ``good boy'' in the UN.It plays an exemplary role in the UN's peacekeeping operations and generally projects itself as a responsible international citizen, though this image is not a little sullied by its resistance to US arms-control efforts. As to not letting expansion happen till it can be sure of getting in, India has had plenty of help from others similarly ambitious and inclined to obstruct. So all manner of bizarre proposals on expansion have done the rounds till everyone is sick and weary.From India's point of view, a delay of a few years can do no harm. The passage of time can only strengthen its natural claim, hopefully putting it ahead of the Pakistans and Indonesias which consider themselves equal contenders. All it needs to do meanwhile is sit tight. If America wants others to share expenses, let it find a way to do so without offering a more generous expansion. And good luck to it.
