`Obama may make a big impact or disappoint Indians on UNSC`

Lalit K Jha
Washington, Nov 4 (PTI) Given the sensitivity of
Indians on UN Security Council aspirations, US President
Barack Obama during his forthcoming visit to India will either
make a big positive impact or disappoint it, a former top
American diplomat to New Delhi has said.
"Will the President, while he is in India and probably
while he is speaking to the Parliament, utter the words, 'The
United States supports India's permanent membership in a
reformed UN Security Council' or not?
"If he does, it'll have a very, very positive effect
on both the people of India, and on the national security
elite of India. If he does not, they'll be disappointed,"
Robert Blackwill, former US Ambassador to India, told
reporters in a briefing on Obama's India visit.
"I'm not now going to do the merits of the case on
that, but he'll either make a big positive impact or
disappoint them," Blackwill said, who currently is Henry
Kissinger Senior Fellow for US Foreign Policy at the Council
on Foreign Relations – a prestigious US-based think tank.
As Obama arrives in the west Indian city of Mumbai
later this week on a three-day India visit – his longest
overseas trip as the US President – Blackwill said Indians
will be watching most carefully for the president's position
on the Security Council and on the entities list.
"I think that my prescription would be that he say to
the Indian Parliament, which would get them on their feet with
rapturous applause, that the US supports India's permanent
membership in the Security Council in the context of a
reformed Security Council.
"That's a very direct way of saying it. And if he uses
more equivocal language, of course, the Indian scribes will
take the more equivocal language apart a sentence and a -- or,
sorry, a phrase and a word at a time," he said.
"Just to put one more fact forward: Now the US and
China are the only two countries that are permanent members of
the Security Council that have not endorsed India's membership
-- permanent membership in the Security Council.
So, I don't think that's very good company for the US
to be keeping on this issue. So I very much hope he'll say
that to the Parliament," Blackwill said. PTI