ROME, July 13: Pakistan and Italy on Wednesday called for building consensus on the proposed UN reforms and reaffirmed their mutual agreement to push for changes in the world body that were equitable and just.

“Let there be reforms that give voice to all countries and not just create more privileged groups,” Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told reporters here after meeting with Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.

Briefing journalists about his day-long engagements, Mr Aziz said that the issue of proposed UN reforms came up for detailed discussion with Mr Ciampi.

He said that Pakistan and Italy had identical views on the proposed UN reforms and both agreed that changes to the UN Security Council should be done in a manner that provides a voice to all member countries. “The reforms should be equitable and not uneven,” he said.

Italy and Pakistan, as members of the “uniting for consensus” group, are pushing for the incorporation of non-permanent members at the UN Security Council.

The G-4, which includes Germany, India, Brazil and Japan, calls for the expansion of the UN Security Council through induction of new permanent members.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has acknowledged that Pakistan and Germany differ on UN reforms but their differences are more about timing than anything else.

Prime Minister Aziz said that he briefed the Italian president on the situation prevailing in the region with specific relation to Pakistan’s ties with India, Afghanistan and Iran.

He said that he had told Mr Ciampi that Pakistan supported a strong and stable Afghanistan and had deployed more than 70,000 troops on its border to check cross-border infiltration of unwanted elements.

Mr Aziz said that Pakistan was looking after 3.2 million Afghan refugees and was in favour of their slow and gradual return to their homeland as it did not want them to be dislocated overnight.

The prime minister again raised the issues of inter-faith dialogue and Islam’s image. He said that the war against terrorism also came up for discussion.

Mr Ciampi, who headed Italy’s central bank for 14 years before taking over the presidency, praised the democratic and economic reforms in Pakistan.

Earlier in the day, the prime minister had a working lunch with senior executives of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, World Food Programme and IFAD and urged them to do more to assist Pakistan in the field of agriculture in what he called end-to-end programmes involving cultivation, input, research, packaging, storage and marketing of agricultural products.