12 February 2004	Thursday	20 Zilhaj 1424

NEW DELHI, Feb 11: Israel's Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom Wednesday 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 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.

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 defence, 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. Defence co-operation had been discussed in his meeting earlier in the day with Defence Minister George Fernandes, he added. -AFP