US should endorse India's candidacy for UNSC: McCain

Minutes before US President Barack Obama boarded the Air Force One on his way to Mumbai, his first step on his maiden trip to India, the Republican Party today said America should "fully back" New Delhi's pursuit for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council.

"The United States should fully back India's pursuit of permanent membership on the UN Security Council," Senator John McCain, the powerful Republican leader, said in his speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"If we want India to join us in sharing the responsibilities for international peace and security, then the world's largest democracy needs to have a seat at the high table of international politics," he said.

McCain's endorsement for India's bid for the UN Security Council gain significance given the bipartisan nature of support on Indo-US relationship between and the emergence of Republican Party as a strong force after the Tuesday's mid-term polls, in which it gained majority in the US House of Representatives.

"India must be represented in the foundational institutions of the global order. The United States should push for India's inclusion in the International Energy Agency, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, and those parts of the global non-proliferation regime from which India is still excluded," he said.

"India is also naturally poised to lead in the global promotion of democratic governance, which is increasingly a norm of the international order that our nations should foster," he said.

"It is my hope that the US can work together with India to develop its own national institutions for the promotion of democracy worldwide.

In the final calculation, the most positive feature of US-India relations is our shared democratic values, and it is ultimately our success in advancing these values together that will provide the most enduring source of security for us both," he observed.

"My friends, our expectations for the US-India partnership are extremely high, and we are right to set them as such. But our success is not a foregone conclusion, and I would like to close this morning on a cautionary note," he said.

"If India and the US are to build a strategic partnership, we must each want it, and commit to it, and defend it in equal measure.

"And though our democratic values are our greatest source of strength, it is the domestic pressures of our democratic politics that pose perhaps the single greatest danger to our emerging partnership," he said.

"We must each navigate these issues with care and forethought" for although India and the US will each make our own decisions, those decisions will be significantly shaped by the actions of the other," McCain said.