New York, Sep 26 (IANS): Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said the G4 nations stood firm on ensuring and contributing to global peace and security, upping the ante for permanent seats on the high table of the UN Security Council for India, Japan, Brazil and Germany.

"The UNSC must include the world's largest democracies, major locomotives of the global economy, and voices from all the major continents," the prime minister said during the first G4 Summit here in over a decade. "We should aim to reform UNSC during its ongoing 70th session of the UN."

He said the commencement of text-based negotiations of the UNSC "is an important first step but it must be carried to its conclusion in the 70th UN General Assembly".

The prime minister said the world today lived in a fundamentally different era from when the UN was born, faced with complex, and undefined challenges. "The subject of reforms in the UNSC has been focus of global attention for decades, but unfortunately without progress."

He said the challenges and the threats were different today.

The meeting, hosted by India, was attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.

The G4 countries rank among the top 10 economies in the world. They are elected for a two-year term on the Security Council as non-permanent members by their respective regional groups. India has served the council twice in the past.

Merkel said the G4 needs to try to find allies, talk to others to meet its goals, while Rousseff said results achieved so far have not been very substantial, calling for a better, concerted effort at sensitizing the global community.

Abe said this was a historical global opportunity for G4 and the world.