India ensured concerns of all 15 UNSC members taken on board

United Nations, Aug 24 (PTI):
India adopted a “consultative approach in working on the significant outcome documents that emerged from the signature events of its Security Council Presidency to ensure that needs and concerns of all 15 members of the UN body are taken on board and that these would also provide tangible benefits to the United Nations in the field, India’s envoy here said.
India’s Presidency of the powerful UN Security Council for the month of August will end in a week. The country held three signature events during its Presidency on the topics of maritime security, peacekeeping and counter-terrorism, with significant outcome documents emerging out of each of the three events.
There were significant outcome documents which emerged out of the three signature events. We had started our preparations right from the time we entered the Council. We first engaged in extensive discussions with the relevant UN agencies to ensure that the documents that emerged out of these events were focussed and would provide tangible benefits to the UN in the field, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador TS Tirumurti told PTI in an interview.
We adopted a consultative approach in working on these documents to ensure that the needs and concerns of all 15 members of the Security Council are taken on board.
Having such a consultative process does take time, but ultimately it led to substantial results which also had the unanimous support of all the members of the Security Council. This is our strength and everyone appreciated the inclusive nature of our consultations, he said.
Tirumurti noted that he is happy that all the three (signature) events were extremely successful. He termed the August 9 event on maritime security presided over by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as path breaking in many ways since this was the first time the Prime Minister of India chaired the Security Council.
Further this was the first time when we had a comprehensive debate on the holistic concept of Maritime Security and what it entails, Tirumurti said adding that there was also a Presidential Statement on Maritime Security which incidentally was also the first Presidential Statement on the concept.
The Presidential Statement deals with important issues relating to Maritime Security, including the place of UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) in Maritime Security, freedom of navigation, terrorism, especially at sea like Mumbai attacks, trafficking in arms, drugs and humans, the place of regional and sub-regional organisations in this context, piracy.
The event, which itself saw high-level participation from Heads of States and Governments & Foreign Ministers, showed the high importance which the Council members attached to the issue of Maritime Security, Tirumurti said.
Several other non-Council members also gave written statements.
Overall, our holding signature event on a very important topic was highly appreciated given the complexities of this topic and the ability of our delegation to bring together different views on a single consensus text.