By Hook Or By Cook

AT one of the British High Commission receptions during Queen Elizabeth's visit, an irritated British foreign secretary Robin Cook complained to a retired Indian official that the Indian media should be managed better. Unlike his colleagues, the official told Cook he was amazed at the remark, considering the media was completely free in Britain. So it wasn't totally surprising that, once he returned to Britain, Cook blamed the media for the various controversies dogging the Queen's programme. For, most observers agreed that the Queen's third visit to India was an unmitigated disaster. Obviously, Cook had hopelessly misread the mood of an oversensitive Indian establishment. Even as the latter part of the visit went off smoothly, Cook's faux pas and the Indian reaction had cast its shadow.

And while Cook waved away the Queen's Chennai speech controversy as "a storm in a toast cup" and blamed the media for causing mischief between him and Prime Minister I.K. Gujral, there was a definite unanimity among the Indian and British press that he had to accept a fair share of the blame. Indeed, it is not often that a British shadow foreign secretary says the best its foreign secretary can do is to shut up. "Sad to say, a period of silence from Mr Cook would do much for Britain's standing in the world," Michael Howard claimed. "Never in recent British history has a foreign secretary upset so many people in such a short time."

As the British media rounded on Cook for his "clumsy diplomacy", The Daily Telegraph wrote that "the foreign secretary appears to have underestimated the sensitivity of India to any suggestion that Kashmir is more than a bilateral issue." It said this had placed the Queen "in an unnecessarily difficult position" and "for that the foreign secretary must take the blame". So it concluded: "Mr Cook, a bold but inexperienced foreign secretary, has blundered and should apologise for embarrassing the Queen." So much so that a day before the Queen flew out of India, agency reports had it that Tony Blair ordered his cabinet to initiate a "damage control" media offensive to prevent the tour from casting its shadow on relations between Buckingham Palace and Whitehall.

Cook's problems began as soon as he landed in Islamabad. At a diplomatic reception, he spoke informally to Pakistani journalists, one of whom put it out as an exclusive interview (see box.) The British chose to keep quiet. Then the Pakistan foreign office put out its version of what had transpired at Cook's meeting with Nawaz Sharif and Pakistani foreign minister Gohar Ayub Khan. The British said nothing again. Earlier, at a banquet in Islamabad, the Queen advised India and Pakistan to end their "historic disagreement". In India, British high commissioner David Gore-Booth added his mite by terming the Indian reaction to reports from Islamabad as 'preposterous'.

New Delhi was closely watching all this and reporting to Prime Minister I.K. Gujral, then on an Africa tour. A few hours before he was to return, he let loose during a chat with Egyptian intellectuals in Cairo and called Britain a 'third-rate power'. Clearly this was meant to be conveyed to London and, sure enough, several journalists accompanying him were briefed. UNI put out the story at 2 pm on October 12, seven hours before the Queen was to land in India. Late into the night, the Ministry of External Affairs issued a denial that no one was willing to buy. Meanwhile, to calm things down, Cook issued his own denial the next morning, saying: "I gave no interviews, press conferences or public statement on Kashmir while in Pakistan." Of course, each side was aware the other was lying, though they accepted the denials officially.

That both countries were playing it safe was evident from the bland joint statement issued after the Gujral-Cook meet. It spoke of the two nations reviewing bilateral relations, the Commonwealth, the UN reforms and the ASEM meeting. There was no mention of the Kashmir brouhaha which had exercised the Indian officials and the media. Highly placed sources say Gujral was rather cold and distant, and tactfully referred to all the controversies surrounding the visit, saying these could have been avoided. He mentioned the denial of his own statement as well as Indian sensitivity on Kashmir. He informed Cook about India's effort to improve ties with its neighbours and that, when it came to Pakistan, India wanted any dispute settled bilaterally despite Islamabad's desire for third-party mediation. Gujral reportedly stressed that any such effort would anyway lead to no solution. For his part, Cook explained that the media had been hyperactive and that at no stage had he intended to offer any British mediation. He 'regretted' any misunderstanding.

British journalists, who know Cook well, are surprised that he expressed regret. They say he is an abrasive man who does not easily change his stand. But obviously, Cook did not want any more complications while the Queen was still in India. And just as well. A London-based journalist notes that it is unfortunate that Cook has had to carry the can for Labour, for "he is more focused on South Asia than his predecessors".

The Labour government has a double-principled approach to Kashmir: to accomplish what it promised before the elections and to follow the 'ethical' foreign policy Robin Cook outlined soon after coming to power. Labour's Kashmir resolution of 1995 says Britain "must accept its responsibility as the former imperial power", it "must use its influence" and it is "under obligation to seek a solution". If one reads this in conjunction with Cook's "mission statement" 10 days after Labour came to power, his position becomes clearer. "This is an age of internationalism," the statement says. "We are instant witness in our sitting rooms through the medium of television to human tragedy in distant lands, and are therefore obliged to accept moral responsibility for our response." If you can see footage of an event, it becomes your business. The new policy goes: "The Labour government does not accept that political values can be left behind when we check in our passports to travel on diplomatic business." National interest "cannot be defined only by narrow realpolitik".

Some Indian officials now admit that New Delhi failed to understand this change in thinking in Whitehall. "(Labour's Kashmir policy) has nothing to do with constituency pressure but all to do with a sense of historic responsibility," says a senior official. But why is Labour talking about its imperial responsibility 50 years after Independence, considering no one believes that Labour will always act on 'ethical' policies?

In fact, Labour has already been elastic with the word 'ethical'. Its party manifesto had declared: "We will make protection and promotion of human rights a central part of our foreign policy." But arms sales to Indonesia are going ahead, so is business with China despite what Beijing has refused to do in Hong Kong vis-a-vis human and democratic rights. Labour leaders have been far from clear what they consider ethical about India and what they don't. One day British intervention over Kashmir sounds ethical. The next, Derek Fatchett, a minister in the foreign office, praises India for its ethical ways, for succeeding in combining progress with a commitment to human rights.

But Labour does not look like forgetting the 1995 resolution with the ease with which Delhi expected it to. And for all its ethical pretensions, the resolution was prompted less by considered policy or constituency pressures than by personal pique. The resolution was drafted by three MPs and blessed by Cook. Three among 650 MPs carry only limited election clout, and these are all safe Labour seats. If Labour has a policy hostile to India now, it is partly provoked by the brand of diplomacy, or the lack of it, conducted by India House in London. Cook was invited to a meeting at Brent town hall in 1995, ostensibly by Labour councillors of Indian origin. At the meeting the councillors were relegated to the background and High Commissioner L.M. Singhvi thrust himself forward in what became evident as a Government of India show, not a meeting between a party leader and members. Singhvi later hogged credit for the supportive remarks Cook made about India. Cook was furious.

This year India House did a repeat during the Labour conference in Brighton. This time Fatchett was invited to speak. On the face of it, this was to be another meeting between Labour councillors and a Labour minister. But Singhvi was on stage again,delivering a speech. Councillors were left with no role to play. The Pakistanis were far more subtle a day earlier. The Pakistani high commissioner stayed carefully away from a meeting between British citizens of Pakistani origin and their British minister.

Several officials at India House have distanced themselves from this kind of diplomacy. Bhaskar Ghorpade, a barrister who has worked with the Indian High Commission in London for several years, says: "In my years of association with India House since 1976, I have never seen diplomacy conducted like a picturesque ritual. Officials spend more time arranging planting of trees, distribution of busts of Gandhi than in saying the right things to the right people." India House, he alleges, has "failed to study local conditions and assess the areas of local susceptibility and to cultivate the acquaintance of local politicians impartially." As an official quips: "Labour needs to drop Gerald Kaufman, India needs to drop Singhvi."

바카라 웹사이트But whatever the positions of the Labour government, ethical or otherwise, it's been given a taste of the confrontations that will follow from an attempt to act on its 1995 resolution. Lord Curzon may or may not have been right when he said that without India Britain would become a "third-rate power". Whatever anyone in India says or denies, New Delhi's perception is clear and unanimous. Labour is pondering again how far it can go before it runs into a wall.