According to his spokesman Monica Grayley, UN General Assembly President Dennis Francis will travel to India later this month after attending the Nonaligned and Group of 77 summits in Uganda.
She informed reporters on Tuesday that after his visit to Kampala, Uganda, on January 17 and 21, he is expected to travel to China and India.
The visitation schedule for India was not immediately available.
In his dealings with Indian officials, the Security Council reform, South-South Cooperation, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals are probably going to come up.
Francis will have his Chef de Cabinet, Collen Vixen Kelapile, traveling with him.
Francis, a career diplomat from Trinidad who was elected Assembly president last year, will highlight at the summits in Kampala “that at a time of unprecedented crises, the combined voice of the Global South is needed much more”, Grayley said.
External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar will be representing India at the two summits.
Francis has expressed the need for moving ahead with the deadlocked reform of the Security Council, which is of importance to India.
“Our objective must be to find and/or create ways to move beyond a perpetual stalemate” as the need of the hour is for “a Council that is more balanced, more representative, more responsive, more democratic, and more transparent”, he said at a roundtable on the reform co-sponsored by India last month.
Francis has conveyed gratitude for India’s efforts to promote the Global South.
He stated that the contribution from the India UN Development Fund “is no small feat, especially in this age of shrunken fiscal spaces, compounded by the impacts of pandemic and other global shocks in recent years” during a meeting in November of last year.
In his country, he said, “it supports innovative, Southern-owned and led demand-driven sustainable development projects”.
Source:IANS