ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said on Tuesday India’s demand to add more permanent members to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) would increase the likelihood of “paralysis” for the world body which already finds it difficult to efficiently deal with longstanding global disputes, the state media reported.

The minister made the remarks at the Summit of the Future on its concluding day, as Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his entourage arrived in New York to attend the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).

One of the six principal organs of the UN, the UNSC comprises powerful countries as its permanent members who are tasked with maintaining international peace and security. The Council also comprises 10 non-permanent members who are elected for a two-year term by the UNGA.

Currently, Russia, China, the UK, the US and France are the five permanent council members. India has been at the forefront of a years-long struggle to reform the most powerful international body, saying that it deserves a place among its permanent members. However, Pakistan is among the countries that has opposed India’s bid, saying adding more permanent members would increase the concentration of global power among a few countries and seeking more democratic and equitable UNSC reform.

“Referring to the UN Security Council’s frequent failure, the defense minister said that adding more permanent members — as demanded by India and its allies — will multiply the prospects of its paralysis,” APP reported on Tuesday.

The statement quoted him as saying that the council “should be adequately enlarged and made more representative by adding more non-permanent elected members to the council.”

Relations between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan have been fraught for years, making visits by senior officials of the two countries to each other’s nations rare. The two neighbors have fought three wars, two of them over the Muslim-majority Himalayan region of Kashmir, which they both claim in full but rule in part.

Asif also highlighted that the “panoply of measures envisaged in the UN Charter must be activated to resolve new and old disputes, including the Jammu and Kashmir dispute.”

He emphasized the need to ease power tensions throughout the world and build a new consensus to promote nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and conventional arms control.

The minister warned during his remarks that no sustainable development could take place in the world till tragedies like Gaza are perpetuated by the developed world.a