Pakistan always rakes up bilateral issues in multilateral forums: MEA 

Government of India on Thursday said that enhancing counter-terrorism action by the powerful UN body and depoliticizing the process of putting sanctions on terror entities will be among its top priorities.

Briefing the media on India's election to the UN body, Secretary West in the Ministry of External Affairs, Vikas Swarup made this statement hours after India won the non-permanent member of the 15 member United Nations Security Council (UNSC) from the Asia-Pacific category for 2021-22 term.

India was overwhelmingly elected as a non-permanent member of the powerful UN Security Council for a two-year term in an unprecedented election, in which envoys from the 192 member states voted wearing masks and in adherence to strict social distancing norms given the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Earlier also, when India was a member of the Security Council during 2011-12, we had chaired the United Nations counter-terrorism committee and had brought in the concept of 'zero tolerance to terrorism'," Swarup said.

"The process of sanctioning also needs to be depoliticised as there is no justification of any act of terrorism," Swarup said.

Asked if a Pakistani representative had raised a bilateral issue at the multilateral forum and politicised the platform, Swarup said this is the kind of behaviour "we have been seeing from Pakistan over the past many months and years".

"They always rake up bilateral issues in multilateral fora. They have made it almost a standard norm for their policy," Swarup said.

"As far as we are concerned, our foreign policy has a much broader canvas, we have a much wider and global focus and as a member of the UNSC, we will be dealing with all those issues which are under the consideration of the security council in line with priorities that the External Affairs Minister (S Jaishankar) has outlined," he said.

"Our work in the UNSC will be guided on our Prime Minister's call for reformed multilateralism, and the dynamic 5-S vision namely Samman (respect), Samvad (dialogue), Sahyog (cooperation), Shanti (peace) and Samriddhi (universal prosperity)," Swarup said.

(With inputs from agencies)