ROME, July 15: Pakistan and Italy on Friday reaffirmed opposition to any proposal for United Nations Security Council expansion, entailing an increase of permanent seats for individual states and creation of new centres of privileges.

In a joint declaration issued at the conclusion of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz’s visit to Italy, the two sides, both belonging to the “Uniting for Consensus” group, reiterated that the UNSC reforms must be pursued on the basis of solutions that enjoyed general consensus of UN member states and were inspired by the need to preserve and increase representative character and operational efficiency of the world body.

“The parties expressed firm opposition to any reform proposal, entailing the increase of permanent seats for individual states, which will seriously affect the functioning of the council and the perspective of the strengthening of its role.

“They opposed the creation of new centres of privilege and any moves contrary to the over-arching of the UN principle of the sovereign equality of states.”

The two leaders condemned the recent acts of terrorism in London and reiterated their commitment to struggle against terrorism. They also stressed the need to tackle underlying factors of terrorism.

They agreed on the need to support the electoral process in Afghanistan.

Both sides expressed the hope that the ongoing composite dialogue process between Pakistan and India would continue in a sincere, purposeful and forward looking manner to resolve the outstanding issues and to seek final settlement of the Kashmir dispute.

The two sides also underlined the need to activate the bilateral Joint Economic Commission and agreed to expeditiously finalize debt cancellation and, if necessary, negotiate a new debt swap agreement at the earliest possible.