NEW DELHI, 12 February 2004 — Israel’s Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom yesterday wrapped up a three-day visit to India with an appeal to New Delhi to reconsider its voting patterns on resolutions against Israel at the United Nations.
Shalom told a media briefing he had discussed the issue in his meetings with with Indian leaders, who maintain friendly ties with Palestinians, including leader Yasser Arafat.
“We are trying now to change the way of voting of the members of the United Nations. We believe that now after so many years the time has come for them to reconsider the pattern of voting,” he said.
He said that every year a number of anti-Israeli resolutions came up at the United Nations General Assembly and “unfortunately many countries were voting (against us) automatically. And India is not different from the others.”
“...I am not asking them (India) to vote with us all the time but we would be very happy if the voted us with sometimes,” he said.
Shalom said he had spoken to many world leaders who agreed with him that many UN resolutions -- some dating back to 1967 -- had no validity now.
“We hope there will be a change here as well as other countries.”
Once a bitter critic of Israel, India has moved closer to the Jewish state in the five years since the Hindu right entered power here.
Publicly, however, New Delhi continues to espouse the Palestinian cause, and both Israel and India have taken pains to stress their emerging relationship is not an “anti-Islamic” alliance.
India established full diplomatic ties with Israel in 1992 and their co-operation has since taken off, particularly in defense, with Israel now India’s largest
military supplier apart from Russia.
Ariel Sharon made the first visit by an Israeli prime minister to India in September, and a month later India signed a one billion-dollar deal to buy the Phalcon military radar system from Israel.
Shalom told the media briefing Israel would “shortly” be making deliveries of three Phalcon airborne early-warning radar systems to India.
Defense co-operation had been discussed in his meeting earlier in the day with Defense Minister George Fernandes, he added.
Talks with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee also yesterday, he said, had centered around ways to curb terrorism as well as the situation in the Middle East.
The foreign minister said that New Delhi, while reluctant to support Israel on its decision to build a security barrier in the West Bank, appreciated its position on the subject as a country under threat.
Shalom, who cut short his scheduled four-day visit by a day, also met President Abdul Kalam yesterday.
He began his visit to India on Monday with a meeting with Indian business leaders in the western commercial hub of Bombay, during which projects aimed at boosting trade between the two countries were discussed.
The level of bilateral trade between India and Israel reached about $1.6 billion last year, according Shalom.
On Tuesday, Shalom met Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani and Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha and exchanged views on terrorism and boosting cultural and trade ties, officials said.
