Nations should accommodate each other's concerns: Modi

United Nations: Underlining the need for a "genuine international partnership," Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said nations should accommodate each other's concerns and interests when crafting global trade pacts to ensure their efforts are "mutually supportive, not mutually damaging."

Prime Minister Modi, in his first address to the annual session of the UN General Assembly, stressed that each country must take its own national measures and each government must fulfil its responsibility to support growth and development.

"At the same time, we also require a genuine international partnership. At one level, it means a better coordination of policy so that our efforts becomes mutually supportive, not mutually damaging. It also means that when we craft agreements on international trade, we accommodate each other's concerns and interests," he said.

Outlining his vision for a post-2015 development agenda, Modi said the eradication of poverty must remain the core of the ambitious agenda and "command our fullest attention."

"When we think of the scale of want in the world - 2.5 billion people without access to basic sanitation; 1.3 billion people without access to electricity; or 1.1 billion people without access to drinking water, we need a more comprehensive and concerted direct international action.

"In India, the most important aspects of my development agenda are precisely to focus on these issues. The eradication of poverty must remain at the core of the Post 2015 Development Agenda and command our fullest attention," he said.

India's tech-savvy Prime Minister used the analogy of Facebook and Twitter to tell the UNGA that development and empowerment can spread at the same speed as the two social networks have spread across the world.

"If you think of the speed with which Facebook or Twitter has spread around the world, if you think of the speed with which cell phones have spread, then you must also believe that development and empowerment can spread with the same speed," he said.

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