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Miliband, Susan Rice tell India
some hometruths
Gur Varinder Singh/WSN Bureau
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In the dark
times in India, when hawks want to carpet bomb Pakistan and
drawing room debates are punctuated with vituperative without
any deeper understanding of where the terror originates from,
there were some voices of sanity. British Foreign Minister David
Miliband, Prez Obama's UN envoy Susan Rice and Prof Mahmood
Mamdani had many words of wisdom for us even as India displayed
cussedness on human rights front and Pakistan's Asif Zardari
found his real terrorists in journos. |
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 NEW
DELHI: When British Foreign Secretary David Miliband came visiting
India last week and chose to say a few home truths, Indian hawks
were quick to term the visit as a diplomatic disaster. But the week
did not only see Miliband telling India that Mumbai terror and
Kashmir were inter-linked. US President Barack Obama's hand-picked
UN envoy Susan Rice identified Kashmir as one of the "hot spots" and
bracketed it with conflict-torn regions, including the Balkans and
Golan Heights.
The reference to
Kashmir
came as passing mention during Rice's testimony before the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, which held a nomination hearing for her
last Thursday.
 Clearly,
the Indian establishment has been left with a bitter after taste but
will it learn to brush up on the reality and see for itself what is
so clear to the rest of the world? Miliband even chose to repeat his
thoughts, the links between the
Kashmir
dispute with Lashkar-e-Toiba and terrorism in the region, not only
in front of a Mumbai audience but also in an article in the UK-based
The Guardian newspaper.
New Delhi was
hardly prepared to listen to advice that
India
needed to “incentivise Pakistan” by showing some movement on
Kashmir. Even a proactive intervention by Indian External Affairs
Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who interrupted Miliband to say that it
would be a mistake to link Kashmir with what has happened in Mumbai,
did not stop the UK envoy who repeatedly interrupted the External
Affairs Minister to make the point that the Pakistan state needed
support and it would be wrong to raise the finger of suspicion at
the Pakistani establishment.
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Miliband: Voice of Sanity
Voices of
sanity emerge from time to time from within the Indian political
spectrum, keping alive the hope that sections of civil society
have refused to be swayed by the hawkish rhetoric served from
Indian North Block leaks and myriad TV channels that fill all
the airtime with hatred for Pakistan when they run out of
programs about bhoot-prets and reinscarnation stories. Among
such voices recently was one from Prem Shanker Jha, a veteran
political commentator, who commented on British Foreign
Secretary David Miliband's piece in The Guardian wherein the
latter had said that that the appeal of terrorism to Pakistanis
might be reduced if Pakistan and India settled their dispute
over Kashmir.
Even as the
Indian media and the Ministry of External Affairs interpreted
this as a reflection of his conceit (Indian media and government
think the same thoughts, dream the same dreams, a malady which
afflicts doubly when it comes to Pakistan), Jha described how
Miliband had angered many Indians by showing a marked reluctance
to brandish a big stick at Pakistan. “There is a debate going on
between those who recognise that there is a serious need for
reform in Pakistan and those who are... in denial. It is very
important that the reformers win.” This is what Miliband had
said. Brandishing threats, he implied, would make sure that the
reformers lose. What is the Indian problem exactly with this?
Jha adds:
While it is important not to let terrorists go unpunished,
terrorism has to be tackled at its roots. What is more, they
reflect a determination to move from confrontation to dialogue,
and from military to political engagement in other fields as
well.
His words
will come as manna to the ears of a world that has lived in
dread of escalating conflict for the last eight years. New
Delhi’s hawks will do well to ask themselves whether they want
India to remain the odd man out. |
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Miliband then
sought to rub it in by telling Mukherjee that he would make a
statement on absolving the Pakistani establishment to the media,
waiting outside for the joint press conference at Hyderabad House.
David Miliband
has a mind of his own and refused to use the one made available by
India for
free. New Delhi, not used to plain speak, was hoping he would only
mouth the words of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown who, during
his December visit, had said that three-fourths of the serious
terrorist threats investigated by Britain’s security services had
had a Pakistan connection.
And if the
Indian officialdom thought it had had enough of Miliband, they were
clearly having hazy ideas. In
Delhi, Miliband
told officials to concentrate on other important issues like climate
change, pointing out that the fog in
New Delhi
was due to it.
Indians were
pricked by the generation gap perhaps when Miliband referred to
Mukherjee by his first name throughout the more than
hour-long-meeting while Mukherjee addressed the 43-year-old as “your
excellency”.
But it is Susan
Rice that
India will have
to deal with more often.
"From the
Balkans to East Timor, from Liberia to Kashmir, from Cyprus to the
Golan Heights, the United Nations has, for more than six decades,
played a critical role in forestalling renewed fighting, helping to
resolve conflict and repair war-torn countries, providing
humanitarian aid, organising elections, and responding to threats to
international peace and security," Rice said in her testimony.
Susan Rice,
former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the
Clinton Administration, was foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama
during his election campaign.
As if all of
this was not enough, on Friday evening, outgoing
US
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, during her farewell phone call
to Pranab Mukherjee, asked India to be generous in its
interpretations and statements on Pakistan. Clearly, India will so
no difference between the old Rice and the new Rice, and will get to
smell no Basmati in all this transition.
21 January 2009
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