World trading rules have been gamed: Jaishankar

New Delhi: In its first year of Independence, India put its trust on multilateralism and took the Kashmir “aggression issue” to the United Nations but others made it a matter of “accession” for geopolitical reasons, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Thursday.

He made the remarks while elaborating on the need for having coexistence between national interests and multilateralism at a session of the Raisina Dialogue. “That was always the case. Look at our own example. Very literally in our first year of Independence, we put our trust in multilateralism and took the Kashmir aggression issue to the UN and others made it into an accession issue and they did it for geopolitical reasons,” Jaishankar said.

He was asked whether values are looking less important in the current geopolitical landscape as countries compromise on principles but never on interests. “If you say people are playing multilateralism, they always did. We have grown up. It is not that we should be against multilateralism,” he said. “Multilateralism is a kind of lowest common denominator and anything above that. It will exist side-by-side with national interests with the calculations and competitions of countries,” the external affairs minister said.

At the same time, he agreed with the view that there is a place for sentiment and solidarity as well. Responding to a separate question on reform of the UN, Jaishankar, citing globalisation, said the “fact is that the world trading rules have been gamed.” “If you look at the last five years, all the big issues, in a way, we have not been able to find a multilateral solution. So the results or lack of results demonstrates the case for reform,” he said.

“But I think there is a larger global conversation and global rebalancing as well which is bigger than the UN, which is really (about) whose rules, how does it work because what has also happened in many cases is the rules have been gamed,” he said.