Merkel backs UNSC reforms

A day after Germany announced that it will phase out all its 17 nuclear plants by 2022,Chancellor Angela Merkel said India would have to decide on the energy.

A day after Germany announced that it will phase out all its 17 nuclear plants by 2022,Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday said India would have to decide on the energy mix it wants to use,and also vouched support for the development of renewable energy. I think it is up to each and every country to decide what energy mix it wishes to use to supply energy. We,from the German side,will see to it and champion at an international level that safety standards for nuclear power plants are very good, Merkel said after bilateral talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

We are cooperating with India in many ways,and in renewables… we can do a lot to boost energy efficiency… Building up a very broad-based energy mix with renewables here is a policy where we can obviously support you all along the way, the Chancellor said.

Manmohan Singh said India needed nuclear power to meet its growing energy demand and adhered to its self-imposed obligations to combat climate change. Nuclear energy accounts for only three per cent of total energy generated in our system. Our capacity is less than 5,000 MW. We want to raise it to 20,000 MW by 2020, he said.

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About the MMRCA deal,Merkel appreciated the procurement procedures as very transparent in India.

On UN Security Council expansion,the German Chancellor said,Its very good that Germany and India can work together from their non permanent seats in the UNSC on this. We are aligning our policies… to bring about reform. The current format and composition no longer reflects the current state of affairs. It still harks back to the days after the World War II. So,I think we should focus our energies and our capacity for speeding up this process… Maybe together we can bring something about.

Singh said he was in agreement with Merkel. He said,Germany and India are members of the G4. We have been arguing for a long time that the global system,particularly the composition of UNSC and its methods of working,need to be brought up to date.