An Evangelist In The Big Apple

EVEN as India and Pakistan indulged in tit-for-tat diplomacy over resumption of bilateral dialogue, Atal Behari Vajpayee's chief evangelist and emissary Jaswant Singh sought to put forth India's post-Pokhran worldview to the Americans, including deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott. This was the first high-level Indo-US contact since the May nuclear tests.

According to an administration source in Washington, the talks between Singh and Talbott went off "reasonably well". "The fact that the two spoke for two-and-a-half hours shows that they had a lot to talk about," he noted. However, neither side gave details of the luncheon meeting, but in a coordinated move, decided to issue an identically-worded brief statement that simply noted that the two interlocutors had a "constructive discussion". The statement also said nuclear non-proliferation was among the issues covered and that the two sides would continue their dialogue at a venue and a date to be set later.

"Talbott forcefully made our concerns clear about the developments in the region," an administration official told 바카라. "He wasn't trying to lecture. He was basically sticking to the script that has evolved from Geneva and London (meetings of the P-5 and G-8). For long now, Indians were complaining that we weren't paying much attention to them. Now they have got it. All eyes are on them after the nuclear tests."

바카라 웹사이트Indeed, Singh's high-profile visit to New York and Washington has highlighted the increased US focus on India. As another US diplomat pointed out: "The Indians have been saying we were only focused on China and ignored India. But that is not the case any more. We are carefully looking at the South Asian scene and are very concerned. We are worried about Kashmir and we simply can't ignore that issue. Who knows what might erupt there with both countries testing one N-device after the other."

바카라 웹사이트Singh, who was ostensibly in the US to attend a UN conference on drugs, too expressed satisfaction after the luncheon meet: "I have little difficulty in asserting that the Indian position is (now) understood much better and that as the days and weeks ahead unfold, we shall see a progressively greater understanding and appreciation of the Indian position."

But a day before the Talbott-Singh meet, president Bill Clinton took analysts by utter surprise by assigning a role for China in resolving the Kashmir issue. In a speech aimed at diffusing the controversy surrounding his forthcoming trip to Beijing, he said: "Because of its history with both countries, China must be part of any ultimate resolution of this (Kashmir) issue." India, expectedly, rejected any such initiative.

The Washington deliberations also coincided with Pakistan rejecting India's offer for foreign secretary-level talks in New Delhi on June 22 as "a gimmick" and offering to talk in Islamabad on June 20 on its own terms. And the Talbott-Singh talks notwithstanding, in London, at the insistence of US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, the G-8 decided to seek postponement of all non-humanitarian loans to India and Pakistan.

It is probably too early to pronounce on the efficacy of Singh's PR exercise. In New York, for more than four days in a row, working an inhuman regimen of 16-hour days, he turned into a News Machine—scooting from one studio to another to appear on several of America's leading TV shows. His message was plain and simple: India had to do what it had to do and the US government doesn't get it.

As he told 바카라: "I'm utilising this opportunity to engage with a wide range of spectrum of American people, especially opinion-makers, members of the media,leaders of industry so that I am able to put across our viewpoint and address whatever doubts and apprehensions they might have about the recent course of events in India. The overriding impression I get is that there seems to be a disjunction between the official statements and unofficial perceptions in the US about recent developments in India. The official statements have been expressed in somewhat extreme language and the large number of people that I have had an opportunity to interact with are much more calm about the situation."

In one such use of "extreme" language, Albright had earlier asserted in Washington that India and Pakistan should "climb out of the hole they have dug themselves into". Singh quickly responded in New York: "I must point out that civilisationally, we, in India, do not dig holes to bury ourselves. Therefore, this observation exemplifies yet another fundamental lack of comprehension about India's stand and addressing Indian sensitivities."

Did he see a rupture in the relationship between the US and India? "Rupture is too graphic, too severe a description. It's a temporary hiccup, a snapping of communication resulting in a lot of misunderstanding."

Many well-wishers of India are alarmed at the tone and tenor of comments emanating from Washington. Marshall M. Bouton, the executive vice president of Asia Society, sums up those concerns: "What's most important, it seems to me, at this juncture is to get beyond this mode of rhetoric and emotive reaction to more searching discussions to where we go from here. It is important that we open a new dialogue in both official and unofficial spheres."

As part of the effort, Singh eloquently articulated India's case to American audiences: "I can't understand any circumstances about India using these nuclear weapons. In today's world they really have a deterrent capability. If you examine the stretch from, roughly, Vancouver to Vladivostok you have a kind of nuclear security paradigm that has come into existence—the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the Asia-Pacific is covered in part, China is an independent nuclear power in its own right; it's only Southern Asia and Africa that are out of this protective pattern of security arrangements. In the kind of neighbourhood India has, which is extremely troubled—and we have declared nuclear weapon powers in our neighbourhood—the basic requirement is to acquire a balancing deterring capability."

In another speech to a cheering crowd of wealthy Indian Americans in Edison, New Jersey, Singh explained: "There had come into existence a sort of a club of nuclear weapon powers. This situation was unreal and untenable because it was based on the security interests of a few. The security interests of the rest of the globe were subservient and secondary to the security interests of the exclusive Club of Five."

TO Singh's delight, the financial community has been rather sympathetic. G.V. Krishna Reddy, chairman of G.V.K. Industries, who is based in Biscoe, North Carolina, said: "People in the US don't like these nuclear explosions, but everyone knows pretty well that India is not a crazy nation that would end up using these weapons. India has never gone against any country and had a war. These tests won't effect US-India trade and commerce. I feel that this whole thing will cool down. In the US also they don't like to lose business and India is one of the most important markets. "

Ram Khanna, a top official at an international bank in Wall Street, said after one Jaswant Singh presentation at the prestigious Harvard Club, "He was really good. And he was reassuring. At the end, this whole nuclear bit by India is not going to affect America's economic ties with India."

바카라 웹사이트In fact, there appears to be a growing understanding, if not acceptance, especially among NRIs, of the logic that New Delhi has presented to justify its tests. Many commentators and strategic experts, much to the chagrin of the Clinton administration, view the Chinese threat to India as a real and credible one. For instance, Prof Ashutosh Varshney, who teaches politics at Harvard and Columbia Universities, pointed out: "Benign assumptions about China—when the border is still unsettled, when Chinese maps continue to show Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim as their territory, when Chinese energy needs are very likely to make it enhance its naval presence in the Indian Ocean, when more than 100,000 Tibetans continue to stay in India—are not unlikely to bring humiliation, grief and tragedy." But is anyone listening on Capitol Hill?