Cook In The Frying Pan

A cartoon in The Times places Robin (Cook) among a species of birds called foreign secretarious sanctimonious. The Robin stands sweating somewhere between India and Pakistan, a little lost outside its natural habitat. That sums up Robin Cook's South Asian fiasco.

Britian's foreign secretary has returned from India an unhappier man. To the long list of all that Robin Cook has been saying about Kashmir has now been added more that could prove the most telling of them all. "We're not pestering India over Kashmir," he said in a radio interview in London. "Throughout the entire trip, neither in Islamabad nor in Delhi did I make any public statement on the issue of Kashmir."

The foreign secretary was distancing himself from the sanctimonious species. "We are not lecturing about Kashmir," he added. "I could understand any country resenting being lectured, but nobody was lecturing." Britain, said Cook, wants to anchor ties with India "as two equal independent countries with mutual respect for each other". Quite a change from his recent sermons about the "duty" of Britain to intervene in Kashmir as an "old imperial power".

Given his record of saying and unsaying, Cook might yet say something else again. But that he went out of his way to publicly deny interfering over Kashmir could be a sign of how Labour views Kashmir—currently. Through all that mess over his South Asian visit, something good may well emerge. It might have provoked what the Indian government would consider sense.

The Labour government was evidently taken back by the severity of the reaction in India. But far more, Labour was surprised by the reaction back home. Not even calling Britain a "third-rate power", token denials notwithstanding, brought flak against India or prime minister I.K. Gujral. Cook was attacked for provoking the reaction, not Gujral for reacting. In that reaction lies what could be critical pointers to the way people in the West might see Kashmir. The US government read the pointers, some Labour leaders in the UK did not.

바카라 웹사이트"The West has exhausted itself over its concern with all sorts of crises around the globe," an Indian official said. Kashmir is far from being Bosnia, but the thought of another and far more distant Bosnia is wearying in Western homes. Cook has a policy of concern and even involvement in what he considers 'ethical' issues around the globe. It is a policy that may be out of tune with the times. The public reaction in Britain to Cook's South Asia visit has come as a strong signal against Cook's intended ways.

This trip, according to a Labour MP, who did not wish to be named, had got Cook irritated with the Pakistanis who had made a public show of what Cook believed was a private meeting with Nawaz Sharif. A senior assistant to Cook had told Labour MPs two years ago that Cook's irritation against Indian bureaucrats—who had touted his remarks at a meeting of Indian councillors as successful manipulation of the Labour Party—drew on the rhetoric of three anti-India MPs and turned it into party policy. A balanced British policy in South Asia could arise from a balance of irritation. Cook is now "pissed off with the Pakistanis" and there may be a "rethinking of this whole Kashmir thing, or maybe just not think about it anymore".

NOW, the indifference of the Labour Party to the zest of a few MPs stands out, its silence about the prevailing views is eloquent. The inevitable move has come from the Pakistan lobby: why is Cook saying he won't pester India on Kashmir? When Labour promised to take Kashmir to the top of its international agenda, pestering was the least Pakistan expected. Councillor Nazir Ahmed, who addressed a Pakistani fringe meeting on Kashmir in Brighton, has written to the Jang, abusing British papers critical of Cook, and asked for a letter-writing campaign to local MPs on Kashmir.

This is becoming a tired game, and a tiring one. Cook and others called the recent events in India stirrings within teacups—thereby establishing Kashmir as an issue that belongs to the realm of the little in Britain. Nor are allegations of human rights abuses convincing. The last incident that was written about with any concern was on Bijbehara in 1993. Kashmir figures as a place where terrorists sometimes abduct tourists, not where Indians are on a killing spree. But the anti-India Kashmir caucus is still at work, though it seems to have been reduced to one. Gerald Kaufman wrote in The Observer: "Britain, in particular, has a role as the imperial power which left the mess behind. Labour as the government then and the government now should, and does, accept a special responsibility." Indians want Kashmir off the international agenda but during the Queen's visit, he said, "had achieved the opposite of what they intended".

Many more MPs are taking an interest in the dispute now, but more to challenge the position taken by Cook. "We will expect Mr Cook to explain the consequences of his handling of the visit in the House of Commons immediately after the recess (on October 27)," says Tory MP Michael Fabricant. "Robin Cook has got so used to being in Opposition and taking a confrontational role in the House of Commons, that he has been unable to adapt quickly enough to being foreign secretary. His style of politics has so annoyed his hosts, the Indian government, that it has cast an unfortunate shadow over the Queen's visit. This may not have been intentional but is unforgivable."

바카라 웹사이트Others say the mess was intended. Former Tory MP Harry Greenway, who has in the past taken an anti-India stand on Kashmir, said: "There is a feeling that the Queen was set up to annoy the Indians and the British set out to diminish her...since she says what the ministers tell her to say. I would go so far as to say that the government's dirty tricks department has been at work."

바카라 웹사이트The Commonwealth meeting and the debate to follow in the House of Commons will push the British into declaring more considered positions. Tory MPs say publicly, and several Labour MPs agree privately, that the Labour government should keep off Kashmir rather than follow the Kaufman line Labour has pursued so far. That, a Labour MP says, would be "the sensible thing to do". There is always the possibility that for that reason Labour might not do it.