In government, Labour persists with its Kashmir doublespeak
THAT other face of Her Majesty's government—the face the Labour party showed the Pakistanis at Brighton two years in opposition and now, in government—is going to remain hidden under the pomp and ceremony of the Queen's visit. This other face is now official, despite all the persuasion of Indian officials in London to get the media not to look, and their bosses in South Block not to know.
The balance in protocol covering the Queen's visit to Pakistan and India is intended to speak of an equality in British policy towards both. But a Labour minister has spoken otherwise. Derek Fatchett, minister in the Foreign Office, told a Pakistani gathering at a fringe meeting during the Labour party's annual conference in Brighton: "UN resolutions are UN resolutions until altered by the UN," he said. You cannot pick and choose which ones to implement "as you do from a menu card."
The minister said further: "Our position is that we support the resolutions and seek a long-term resolution of the Kashmir issue which takes into account the wishes of the Kashmiri people." The problem in Kashmir means "there are losers not only in Kashmir but also in India and Pakistan." Translated into content, the UN resolutions mean support for a plebiscite. The remark about losers in Kashmir and "also" in India and Pakistan is consistent with the 1995 resolution in Brighton which spoke of Kashmir as an area "bounded by" India and other countries. So is the support to UN resolutions.
바카라 웹사이트Gerald Kaufman, old critic of the Indian government, chaired the Pakistan meeting, and underlined the significance of Fatchett's statement: that this is the first time a British government has officially expressed support for the UN resolutions. Former foreign secretary Douglas Hurd had said the UN resolutions are out of date, and the Pakistanis snubbed him during a visit to Pakistan. That pleased Indian officials. Now they are dealing with this new British stand by pretending it isn't there.
"The Fatchett meeting with the Pakistanis was a tame affair," the official spokesman of the Indian High Commission told Indian newsmen. The 1995 resolution, it was hinted, had been conveniently forgotten. The attempt to "manage" the media, and the reports to South Block, did not last.
The following day Fatchett put on the face more presentable to an Indian audience at a meeting called by the British Indian Councillors Association. The talks between India and Pakistan were good, he said. "There cannot be a person alive who does not wish these talks well." Not a word here that he had spoken in support of a plebiscite in Kashmir. He praised India for maintaining a secular democracy for 50 years. Some people, he said, speak of the conflict between economic progress and a commitment to human rights. "The one-word answer to all these people," he said, is "India" because "India has done it all these years".
At the Pakistan meeting, speaker after speaker abused India for violating human rights in Kashmir. Fatchett said nothing about India's secular credentials. Thus, the Labour government has made it clear that it has not distanced itself from the resolution passed two years ago. Former Labour leader Michael Foot backed the Indian position, and what Fatchett picked up from it and what he did not was telling. Foot said it is "desirable, no, necessary to preserve the unity of India". The British government, he said, should support policies that "keep India united and even restore some of the disunion that happened before". The British, he said, "made some terrible mistakes in 1947, we did not listen sufficiently to what some people were telling us. Partition itself was a terrible mistake."
Fatchett said in reply: "He is right, hindsight and experience tell us that some of the decisions were mistaken." He did not spell out which, but the remark went off well at the Indian meeting. Given what he had said 24 hours earlier, the "mistake" did not sound like the mistakes Foot had spoken of.
In New Delhi, while admitting that his countrymen were sometimes guilty of "lingering arrogance", British high commissioner to India Sir David Gore-Booth dismissed charges of the new Labour government "meddling" in Kashmir as "ludicrous". Britain, he said, would get involved only "if both sides wanted us to". But given the trends, this was very unlikely, he added. Instead of "tilting at windmills", India should discuss the "debilitating dispute" with Pakistan, he said. He also added that prime minister I.K. Gujral could tell the British foreign secretary Robin Cook, who is accompanying the Queen, what India thinks of the British offer of its "good offices".
바카라 웹사이트Gujral will perhaps do so and he certainly does not need Gore-Booth's advice. On his part, Gore-Booth should check out why the two "windmills"—Fatchett and Cook—have been making such statements.