Vice President Ansari calls for global effort to eliminate menace of terrorism

Asserting that terrorism has become a global issue which was disturbing social peace and impacting development, Vice President Mohammed Hamid Ansari has said that it is in everyone's interest to eliminate this menace.

Addressing the media onboard Air India Special Flight on way to a five-day visit to Nigeria and Mali, Vice President Ansari said that terrorism had become a global issue.

"It was natural therefore that it constituted an important part of any bilateral discussion - it was in everyone's interest in eliminating this menace and bilateral mechanisms such as intelligence sharing were in place, particularly given that networks of terror had become global," he said.

On India's approach to raising issues of cross-border terrorism by Pakistan with members of Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), the Vice President emphasized that the facts of the issue were pretty clear and that all nations were aware of the problem of state-sponsored terrorism, not just OIC member states.

He further stressed that while we engaged bilaterally with the OIC states, the organisation itself had limited relevance given its consensus based approach of functioning.

Responding to a question of UN Reforms, Vice President Ansari said that although there were obstacles on the path, the reform of the UN Security Council was inevitable.

"Most of the nations of the world, particularly those in Asia, Africa and South America desired it, as the UN could no longer reflect the world of 1945," he said.

He also mentioned the contribution of countries such as India, and Nigeria in the maintenance of international peace and security - these were the principal troop contributors as opposed to the permanent members of the Security Council. So it had become imperative that if the UN was to work as a credible international body, reforms were required.