JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, July 27, 2007 : India will walk out of the nuclear deal with the US after giving six months notice, if it wants to conduct another nuclear test, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told BJP leaders here yesterday.
But in the same briefing, Atomic Energy chief Anil Kakodkar admitted that despite the promised separation between the military and civilian facilities, the people working on both sides could be common.
``Our personnel will move as we want them to,’’ Kakodkar said. National Security Adviser M K Narayanan kept absolutely quiet at Kakodkar’s comments.
Asked for their views on the nuclear deal, BJP leader and former foreign minister Jaswant Singh said he had ``commended’’ the Indian negotiators on doing their job, but the party would reserve judgement until it had seen the text.
``My commending them on the negotiations does not mean that they will produce commendable results,’’ Singh said, denying that he had said that the negotiators had done a ``superb job.’’
But Singh, who negotiated a strategic dialogue with former US deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott for two years after the BJP government conducted nuclear tests in 1998, said his party was concerned that ``the gains of 1998, that is a strategic autonomy for India, must not be compromised. No other country should have a say in India’s strategic programme,’’ he said.
However, if India was now going to dedicate a safeguarded facility to reprocess spent fuel, which would be open to IAEA inspectors, then ``such intrusive IAEA inspection in our nuclear programme is going to be very troublesome,’’ Singh said.
Singh also pointed out that since ``there has to be some give’’ in any negotiation, he wanted to know from the Prime Minister what India had given to the US.
But Narayanan, who largely briefed on the 14 clauses that comprise the agreement, promised to the BJP that there was no space for any dents in India’ strategic autonomy. ``All the decisions will remain ours,’’ Narayanan said.
Singh had more questions : On the details of the additional protocol that India was going to negotiate with the IAEA, how China was likely to react at the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and whether the US was likely to give in to China which had already begun leaning on it heavily to give the same privileges to India.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Govt briefs BJP on nuke deal
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, July 26, 2007 : The government pulled out its star team to brief the BJP on the nuclear deal it has just ``frozen’’ with the US today, but the BJP has decided to reserve judgement until it sees the text of the agreement.
Led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the government team consisted of national security adviser MK Narayanan, atomic energy chief Anil Kakodkar, foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee and foreign secretary Shanker Menon.
But, just like the Left parties had done yesterday, the BJP insisted on seeing the letter of the agreement, and not be guided by the spirit of the discussions.
Evidently, Delhi has been coy about the text because it has agreed with the Americans that both sides will release the text, probably some time next week.
Narayanan did much of the talking, assuring the BJP side that India’s national interest had been protected, that all concerns over reprocessing rights as well as fuel supply in perpetuity had been taken care of.
However, the BJP team – which consisted of former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee, Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie and Rajnath Singh – refused to be convinced. Brajesh Mishra was also present during the discussions, but L K Advani was absent because he had left for Singapore this morning.
The BJP leaders said they wanted to know if the Hyde Act, passed in December 2005, which called for annual certifications on a number of issues, would supersede the 123 agreement or not. But they said they got no clear answers.
``We are not going to be impressed with smart language. We would first like to see the text of the agreement,’’ one BJP leader said.
When the UPA decided to first sign the agreement, the BJP had raised four objections : first, there will be no compromise on India’s strategic security; two, no compromise on nuclear sovereignty; three, no compromise on independent direction to foreign policy; four, if the US did not guarantee fuel supply, what would happen to the nuclear reactors on which India had spent large sums of money?
Moreover, the PM had said in Parliament, that the nuclear deal with the US would put India on par with other nuclear countries. Did that mean that the US would grant Delhi a perpetual waiver as it had done with China under the Atomic Act of 1954?
``There was no satisfactory answer, the PM only said that it was a trade agreement,’’ one BJP leader said.
He said the BJP was concerned about the impact of the Hyde Act of 2005 and the Atomic Act of 1954 and how these would impact on the 123 agreement.
However, the BJP also said that the nuclear deal should not become the sole benchmark of the bilateral relationship with the US, which the BJP was fully in favour of promoting.
ENDS
New Delhi, July 26, 2007 : The government pulled out its star team to brief the BJP on the nuclear deal it has just ``frozen’’ with the US today, but the BJP has decided to reserve judgement until it sees the text of the agreement.
Led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the government team consisted of national security adviser MK Narayanan, atomic energy chief Anil Kakodkar, foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee and foreign secretary Shanker Menon.
But, just like the Left parties had done yesterday, the BJP insisted on seeing the letter of the agreement, and not be guided by the spirit of the discussions.
Evidently, Delhi has been coy about the text because it has agreed with the Americans that both sides will release the text, probably some time next week.
Narayanan did much of the talking, assuring the BJP side that India’s national interest had been protected, that all concerns over reprocessing rights as well as fuel supply in perpetuity had been taken care of.
However, the BJP team – which consisted of former PM Atal Behari Vajpayee, Jaswant Singh, Yashwant Sinha, Arun Shourie and Rajnath Singh – refused to be convinced. Brajesh Mishra was also present during the discussions, but L K Advani was absent because he had left for Singapore this morning.
The BJP leaders said they wanted to know if the Hyde Act, passed in December 2005, which called for annual certifications on a number of issues, would supersede the 123 agreement or not. But they said they got no clear answers.
``We are not going to be impressed with smart language. We would first like to see the text of the agreement,’’ one BJP leader said.
When the UPA decided to first sign the agreement, the BJP had raised four objections : first, there will be no compromise on India’s strategic security; two, no compromise on nuclear sovereignty; three, no compromise on independent direction to foreign policy; four, if the US did not guarantee fuel supply, what would happen to the nuclear reactors on which India had spent large sums of money?
Moreover, the PM had said in Parliament, that the nuclear deal with the US would put India on par with other nuclear countries. Did that mean that the US would grant Delhi a perpetual waiver as it had done with China under the Atomic Act of 1954?
``There was no satisfactory answer, the PM only said that it was a trade agreement,’’ one BJP leader said.
He said the BJP was concerned about the impact of the Hyde Act of 2005 and the Atomic Act of 1954 and how these would impact on the 123 agreement.
However, the BJP also said that the nuclear deal should not become the sole benchmark of the bilateral relationship with the US, which the BJP was fully in favour of promoting.
ENDS
Tete-a-tete with Hamid Ansari
JYOTI MALHOTRA
The Telegraph, July 2007
There’s a couple of crew-cut policemen in regulation safari suits outside the chief minister’s suite in Himachal Sadan (why do they all look like they have a hangover in the middle of the day?) in Delhi’s upper-cut Chanakyapuri area. Another gent emerges in a minute, all wired up around his ears and skull. Mr Hamid Ansari please, I whisper, I’m not used to this cloak-and-dagger stuff. This must be life imitating Hindi movies, but how would I know since I haven’t seen a film in such a long time.
I am ushered into a room stuffy with sofas and air-conditioning, indeed, the air that I have been allowed to step into hallowed ground is all around me. This is where some of the Big Decisions to do with life and liberty, at least in Himachal Pradesh, must be taken. And this is where Hamid Ansari has been asked to sit and lobby parliamentarians from the Lok and Rajya Sabha, on the phone, for the August 10 vice-presidential poll.
That’s when Ansari walks in, dispelling the invisible presences with a breezy ``Hello!’’
He’s a slim man with a head of white hair and he favours the Fab India kurta-churidaar of the old world elite. The UPA’s candidate for Vice-President seems somewhat irritable, though, as if the idea of being in the stratospheric Up There hasn’t quite settled in.
Moreover, he’s fair game now. The fact of his being Muslim -- apart from his impeccable record as an ambassador of India, West Asia scholar-extraordinaire, vice-chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University and lastly, chairman of the Minorities Commission – that tipped the Left parties’ balance in favour of his candidature, is clearly jarring to him.
``Najibullah (the former Afghan president who was hanged by the Taliban when they entered Kabul) once described to me Benazir Bhutto’s condition, that she lived like a parrot in a gilded cage. That’s how I feel now, as if I’m in a gilded cage,’’ says Ansari with a hollow laugh. Then he adds with a chucle, ``Except I’m no parrot!’’
For a man who loves his Tacitus, Herodotus and Thucydides, is equally at home in Hindi, Urdu, Arabic and English, and even some Persian, Ansari is unlikely to ever deliver the glib speech or unthinkingly mimic his masters. Unlike the ever-growing flood of former diplomats in the city desperately seeking political crumbs, Ansari stood up against the tide and spoke out against both the BJP and the Congress-led governments’ policies on Iraq and Iran.
Ansari tells the story of how six of them, including friend and erstwhile national security adviser J N Dixit (who died two years ago), wrote to the parliamentary committee of external affairs on why India should not send troops to Iraq. This was four years ago and senior BJP leaders, seeking to win brownie points with the Americans, had already promised Delhi would send a battalion. In the end, Vajpayee himself ruled against it, saving India the shame and ignominy of treating an old civilisational friend like an enemy.
Perhaps, the fact that as a young IFS officer, he romanced his wife on the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates in Baghdad in 1962-63, got married there in 1964 and subsequently honeymooned in Kurdistan, has something to do with his love for, and understanding of the Arab-Persian world.
Still, it was one thing for a secular-liberal person to dissent with the BJP on its Iraq policy, and quite another to vehemently disagree with the secular-liberal UPA government’s decision on Iran.
``I reflected a very widely held view within India on how the Americans were unfairly treating Saddam Hussein or destroying an ancient culture. As for Iran, as a former UN man, how could Delhi say the Security Council was the place to settle the matter? That’s the place where it gets much more serious.?’’ Ansari said.
Then, he pointed out, ``the fact that I am now a candidate of the UPA points to the depth of the system to take dissent.’’
So how does he feel about the UPA’s ritual tokenism, a woman president and a Muslim vice-president? ``Throughout my career as a civil servant I was not told even once that there were separate rules for Muslims,’’ he shrugs off the accusation.
He tells me about a letter Jinnah wrote to his father in 1947, when he held India’s top job in the insurance business, ``which he must have written to every Muslim in the senior echelons of government at the time,’’ inviting him to move to Pakistan.
His father’s reply was short : ``At my age, I don’t change my country.’’
The father’s low-key style has clearly been inherited by the son. ``All these decades I have kept myself hidden away…’ his voice trails off. His easy, soft-spoken charm also means he’s easily able to win friends from across the ideological spectrum -- and keep them.
In fact, Ansari’s impeccable career credentials (ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Iran, the UAE, India’s permanent representative at the UN) only match an impeccable lineage. His grand-uncle, Dr Ansari, was the president of the Indian National Congress in 1927, and his father worked very closely with him as his political secretary in the Non-Cooperation movement.
``My father was part of a small group of people remembered only as footnotes to Motilal Nehru,’’ he adds deprecatingly. Dr Ansari formed the Muslim Nationalist Party, perhaps or perhaps not, as a counter to the Muslim League. It never took off. His father moved to the private insurance sector.
Hamid Ansari was born in Calcutta in 1937, and since his father was in the moveable insurance business, did his schooling in Shimla. They lived in a big, Raj bungalow opposite the girls school, Auckland house, and that’s where both freedom and partition came. He remembers the family moving to a hotel for some days to tide things over.
The family stories could make up a novel. Such as elder brother Khalid, who having finished from La Martiniere, Calcutta and St. Stephen’s college in 1953 (Ansari himself schooled in Shimla, then returned to Calcutta to study in St. Xavier’s college), went to a `boxwallah’ company for an interview.
``They told him, We have a job for you. Pause. But in Pakistan. He turned them down, saying, he lived here in India,’’ Ansari said.
Then there are others in the extended family, like Mukhtar Ansari, the famous BSP MLA-gangster of eastern UP, with scores of murders to his name, more in jail than outside.
``Mukhtar is party of the family. I can’t disown him. You don’t disown family,’’ says Ansari.
As for the spirit of Nehru’s India that is gradually fading after 60 years, Ansari points out that it was understandable, after Partition, for Hindus and Muslims to be at each other’s throats. But how did one explain the riots and the pogroms over the years, from Meerut and Hashimpura, to the riots after Mrs Gandhi’s assassination in 1984, and even Gujarat in 2002.
As chairman of the Minorities Commission, he read every government inquiry report on every riot, massacre and pogrom since 1947. Every report said the same thing. ``First, trouble is created deliberately, then the state refuses to act. Everywhere you see the state has absented itself from exercising authority.’’
So what of the public accusation that Hamid Ansari, a non-political person will hardly be able to handle a raucuous Rajya Sabha?
In his defence, Ansari tells another story : After he was shortlisted for the post of vice-chancellor of AMU, then HRD minister Murli Manohar Joshi rejected his candidature, saying he would superannuate before the five-year-tenure ended. But President KR Narayanan was not convinced. He consulted two former chief justices who debunked Joshi’s view and Ansari got the job.
Once in AMU, says Ansari, he realized the students were more sinned against than sinning. They would gherao him for hours on end, but their homegrown `tehzeeb’ never allowed them to assault him.
Once, when a dharna outside the V-C’s house did not end after 48 hours, Ansari says, ``on the third morning, I went out and joined them.’’ The dharna fizzled out pretty quickly.
Moral of the story : The next Rajya Sabha better watch out for Mohammed Hamid Ansari.
ENDS
The Telegraph, July 2007
There’s a couple of crew-cut policemen in regulation safari suits outside the chief minister’s suite in Himachal Sadan (why do they all look like they have a hangover in the middle of the day?) in Delhi’s upper-cut Chanakyapuri area. Another gent emerges in a minute, all wired up around his ears and skull. Mr Hamid Ansari please, I whisper, I’m not used to this cloak-and-dagger stuff. This must be life imitating Hindi movies, but how would I know since I haven’t seen a film in such a long time.
I am ushered into a room stuffy with sofas and air-conditioning, indeed, the air that I have been allowed to step into hallowed ground is all around me. This is where some of the Big Decisions to do with life and liberty, at least in Himachal Pradesh, must be taken. And this is where Hamid Ansari has been asked to sit and lobby parliamentarians from the Lok and Rajya Sabha, on the phone, for the August 10 vice-presidential poll.
That’s when Ansari walks in, dispelling the invisible presences with a breezy ``Hello!’’
He’s a slim man with a head of white hair and he favours the Fab India kurta-churidaar of the old world elite. The UPA’s candidate for Vice-President seems somewhat irritable, though, as if the idea of being in the stratospheric Up There hasn’t quite settled in.
Moreover, he’s fair game now. The fact of his being Muslim -- apart from his impeccable record as an ambassador of India, West Asia scholar-extraordinaire, vice-chancellor of the Aligarh Muslim University and lastly, chairman of the Minorities Commission – that tipped the Left parties’ balance in favour of his candidature, is clearly jarring to him.
``Najibullah (the former Afghan president who was hanged by the Taliban when they entered Kabul) once described to me Benazir Bhutto’s condition, that she lived like a parrot in a gilded cage. That’s how I feel now, as if I’m in a gilded cage,’’ says Ansari with a hollow laugh. Then he adds with a chucle, ``Except I’m no parrot!’’
For a man who loves his Tacitus, Herodotus and Thucydides, is equally at home in Hindi, Urdu, Arabic and English, and even some Persian, Ansari is unlikely to ever deliver the glib speech or unthinkingly mimic his masters. Unlike the ever-growing flood of former diplomats in the city desperately seeking political crumbs, Ansari stood up against the tide and spoke out against both the BJP and the Congress-led governments’ policies on Iraq and Iran.
Ansari tells the story of how six of them, including friend and erstwhile national security adviser J N Dixit (who died two years ago), wrote to the parliamentary committee of external affairs on why India should not send troops to Iraq. This was four years ago and senior BJP leaders, seeking to win brownie points with the Americans, had already promised Delhi would send a battalion. In the end, Vajpayee himself ruled against it, saving India the shame and ignominy of treating an old civilisational friend like an enemy.
Perhaps, the fact that as a young IFS officer, he romanced his wife on the banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates in Baghdad in 1962-63, got married there in 1964 and subsequently honeymooned in Kurdistan, has something to do with his love for, and understanding of the Arab-Persian world.
Still, it was one thing for a secular-liberal person to dissent with the BJP on its Iraq policy, and quite another to vehemently disagree with the secular-liberal UPA government’s decision on Iran.
``I reflected a very widely held view within India on how the Americans were unfairly treating Saddam Hussein or destroying an ancient culture. As for Iran, as a former UN man, how could Delhi say the Security Council was the place to settle the matter? That’s the place where it gets much more serious.?’’ Ansari said.
Then, he pointed out, ``the fact that I am now a candidate of the UPA points to the depth of the system to take dissent.’’
So how does he feel about the UPA’s ritual tokenism, a woman president and a Muslim vice-president? ``Throughout my career as a civil servant I was not told even once that there were separate rules for Muslims,’’ he shrugs off the accusation.
He tells me about a letter Jinnah wrote to his father in 1947, when he held India’s top job in the insurance business, ``which he must have written to every Muslim in the senior echelons of government at the time,’’ inviting him to move to Pakistan.
His father’s reply was short : ``At my age, I don’t change my country.’’
The father’s low-key style has clearly been inherited by the son. ``All these decades I have kept myself hidden away…’ his voice trails off. His easy, soft-spoken charm also means he’s easily able to win friends from across the ideological spectrum -- and keep them.
In fact, Ansari’s impeccable career credentials (ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Iran, the UAE, India’s permanent representative at the UN) only match an impeccable lineage. His grand-uncle, Dr Ansari, was the president of the Indian National Congress in 1927, and his father worked very closely with him as his political secretary in the Non-Cooperation movement.
``My father was part of a small group of people remembered only as footnotes to Motilal Nehru,’’ he adds deprecatingly. Dr Ansari formed the Muslim Nationalist Party, perhaps or perhaps not, as a counter to the Muslim League. It never took off. His father moved to the private insurance sector.
Hamid Ansari was born in Calcutta in 1937, and since his father was in the moveable insurance business, did his schooling in Shimla. They lived in a big, Raj bungalow opposite the girls school, Auckland house, and that’s where both freedom and partition came. He remembers the family moving to a hotel for some days to tide things over.
The family stories could make up a novel. Such as elder brother Khalid, who having finished from La Martiniere, Calcutta and St. Stephen’s college in 1953 (Ansari himself schooled in Shimla, then returned to Calcutta to study in St. Xavier’s college), went to a `boxwallah’ company for an interview.
``They told him, We have a job for you. Pause. But in Pakistan. He turned them down, saying, he lived here in India,’’ Ansari said.
Then there are others in the extended family, like Mukhtar Ansari, the famous BSP MLA-gangster of eastern UP, with scores of murders to his name, more in jail than outside.
``Mukhtar is party of the family. I can’t disown him. You don’t disown family,’’ says Ansari.
As for the spirit of Nehru’s India that is gradually fading after 60 years, Ansari points out that it was understandable, after Partition, for Hindus and Muslims to be at each other’s throats. But how did one explain the riots and the pogroms over the years, from Meerut and Hashimpura, to the riots after Mrs Gandhi’s assassination in 1984, and even Gujarat in 2002.
As chairman of the Minorities Commission, he read every government inquiry report on every riot, massacre and pogrom since 1947. Every report said the same thing. ``First, trouble is created deliberately, then the state refuses to act. Everywhere you see the state has absented itself from exercising authority.’’
So what of the public accusation that Hamid Ansari, a non-political person will hardly be able to handle a raucuous Rajya Sabha?
In his defence, Ansari tells another story : After he was shortlisted for the post of vice-chancellor of AMU, then HRD minister Murli Manohar Joshi rejected his candidature, saying he would superannuate before the five-year-tenure ended. But President KR Narayanan was not convinced. He consulted two former chief justices who debunked Joshi’s view and Ansari got the job.
Once in AMU, says Ansari, he realized the students were more sinned against than sinning. They would gherao him for hours on end, but their homegrown `tehzeeb’ never allowed them to assault him.
Once, when a dharna outside the V-C’s house did not end after 48 hours, Ansari says, ``on the third morning, I went out and joined them.’’ The dharna fizzled out pretty quickly.
Moral of the story : The next Rajya Sabha better watch out for Mohammed Hamid Ansari.
ENDS
Cabinet clears Indo-US nuke deal
OUR BUREAU
New Delhi, July 25, 2007 : Jubilant over its success in driving a hard nuclear bargain with the US, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh briefed the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs as well as the Cabinet Committee on Security this afternoon, which went on to clear the deal.
The prime minister’s office, betraying its lack of political instinct, had not even contacted political leaders in the Opposition since the Indian team returned from Washington over the weekend, opening itself to the charge of being ``exclusive, not inclusive.’’
The Congress party had made the exact charge against the BJP in 1998 when the nuclear tests took place, when Vajpayee had not deigned to brief former prime ministers in what was described as a ``nationalist step.’’
Today, however, foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee declared the PM would soon brief former prime minister and BJP leader Atal Behari Vajpayee, as well as L K Advani and Jaswant Singh. A meeting with the Left leaders is scheduled tonight.
``All concerns of India have been reflected and adequately addressed,’’ Mukherjee told reporters after the hour-long CCPA-CCS meeting.
He said Delhi’s bottomline on reprocessing spent fuel, lifetime guarantees of fuel supply as well as the implicit acknowledgement of India’s right to test would be incorporated in the agreement.
He said the text of the 123 agreement, as the nuclear deal is known commonly, was shown to all Cabinet ministers this morning, and that it would be table in Parliament on the first day on August 10.
The government’s attempts at being transparent also means that it is trying to manage the publicity fallout. That is why selective briefings on the nuclear deal have already begun, including in the media.
The enormous media interest in the matter, which virtually gives India nuclear power recognition, means that National Security Adviser MK Narayanan, Foreign secretary Shivshanker Menon and atomic energy chief Anil Kakodkar will be briefing the national press on Friday.
Kakodkar’s presence on the high table alongside Narayanan indicates what a long distance the atomic energy chief has travelled. In fact, until Narayanan virtually took over the deal, and Narayanan with it, the deal looked terribly orphaned.
ENDS
New Delhi, July 25, 2007 : Jubilant over its success in driving a hard nuclear bargain with the US, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh briefed the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs as well as the Cabinet Committee on Security this afternoon, which went on to clear the deal.
The prime minister’s office, betraying its lack of political instinct, had not even contacted political leaders in the Opposition since the Indian team returned from Washington over the weekend, opening itself to the charge of being ``exclusive, not inclusive.’’
The Congress party had made the exact charge against the BJP in 1998 when the nuclear tests took place, when Vajpayee had not deigned to brief former prime ministers in what was described as a ``nationalist step.’’
Today, however, foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee declared the PM would soon brief former prime minister and BJP leader Atal Behari Vajpayee, as well as L K Advani and Jaswant Singh. A meeting with the Left leaders is scheduled tonight.
``All concerns of India have been reflected and adequately addressed,’’ Mukherjee told reporters after the hour-long CCPA-CCS meeting.
He said Delhi’s bottomline on reprocessing spent fuel, lifetime guarantees of fuel supply as well as the implicit acknowledgement of India’s right to test would be incorporated in the agreement.
He said the text of the 123 agreement, as the nuclear deal is known commonly, was shown to all Cabinet ministers this morning, and that it would be table in Parliament on the first day on August 10.
The government’s attempts at being transparent also means that it is trying to manage the publicity fallout. That is why selective briefings on the nuclear deal have already begun, including in the media.
The enormous media interest in the matter, which virtually gives India nuclear power recognition, means that National Security Adviser MK Narayanan, Foreign secretary Shivshanker Menon and atomic energy chief Anil Kakodkar will be briefing the national press on Friday.
Kakodkar’s presence on the high table alongside Narayanan indicates what a long distance the atomic energy chief has travelled. In fact, until Narayanan virtually took over the deal, and Narayanan with it, the deal looked terribly orphaned.
ENDS
At last, India has a nuke deal with US
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, July 20, 2007 : It’s all over bar the shouting, and India is the world’s sixth nuclear weapons power in all but name.
Over lunch in Washington DC on Friday, exactly two years and two days after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US president George Bush agreed that India and the US would enter into a special, nuclear relationship, the deal was finally done.
With Pratibha Patil in Rashtrapati Bhavan and Hamid Ansari likely to soon lead the Rajya Sabha, the nuclear deal with the US is a major feather in Manmohan Singh’s turban.
Foreign Secretary Shivshanker Menon is flying back to India tonight and the Cabinet Committee on Security will meet over the next week to clear the deal. With that, the US government goes back to its Congress with the text. Its enough to make the deal public.
In the end, though, Delhi get exactly what it has wanted from the beginning : The right to reprocess spent fuel from civilian nuclear reactors, as well as a very delicately worded compromise on fuel assurances from the American side.
Still, when the story of the Indo-US nuclear deal is written, the award for the hero of the hour must go to Bush’s key aide and US national security adviser Steve Hadley.
It was with Hadley that NSA MK Narayanan has been confabulating for the last many months, to him that Naryanan made the proposal for a separately safeguarded storage facility to reprocess the spent fuel on the eve of the Heilingendamm talks in Germany in early June.
It was Hadley who called Narayanan on Thursday morning and said, ``On your way to meeting the Vice-President (Dick Cheney) at 2 pm, could you drop by my office please?’’
Narayanan dropped by, and the rest as they say, is Indo-US nuclear history.
It was in this meeting that Hadley and Narayanan broke the logjam of fuel assurances for India in perpetuity for India’s civilian nuclear reactors.
Narayanan had argued that the US must live up to the promise given by Bush in Delhi on March 2 that it would help India with its civilian nuclear programme, promising fuel in perpetuity in exchange for safeguards in perpetuity.
In the end, in his 30-minute meeting with Cheney, Narayanan and he spent only two minutes discussing civil nuclear issues.
The day before, the US side had already agreed to give India reprocessing rights, that is, Delhi would be allowed to reprocess the spent fuel from its reactors in the safeguarded storage facility.
Now with Hadley and Narayanan working out a delicate compromise on the US ``right to return,’’ which dictates all nuclear assistance to any country by law, and what would happen in a hypothetical situation if India tested, the deal was as good as done.
By Friday lunchtime, when all sides met and toasted each other, it transpired that the brasstacks negotiators, that is India’s S. Jaishanker and the US’ Richard Stratford had spent about 300 hours in negotiations.
A joint press release said ``the discussions were constructive and positive, and both undersecretary Burns and Foreign Secretary Menon are pleased with the substantial progress made on outstanding issues in the 123 agreement.’’
US diplomats argued that fuel supply guarantees for India were as important as giving India the right to reprocess. According to US law, if any offending country (such as India) conducts a nuclear test, then the US will have the right to invoke the ``right of return'' clause, that is, ask for all the nuclear fuel as well as all the equipment sent to India.
But top diplomats from Washington said the harsh reality was that even if India ever went nuclear, the US would never be able to invoke the requisite law.
``You can never put the toothpaste back into the tube. If the US gives India large amounts of nuclear fuel as well as a bunch of nuclear reactors, the truth is that a few billion dollars of US investment in India will effectively tie down America's hands,'' the diplomat said.
ENDS
New Delhi, July 20, 2007 : It’s all over bar the shouting, and India is the world’s sixth nuclear weapons power in all but name.
Over lunch in Washington DC on Friday, exactly two years and two days after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US president George Bush agreed that India and the US would enter into a special, nuclear relationship, the deal was finally done.
With Pratibha Patil in Rashtrapati Bhavan and Hamid Ansari likely to soon lead the Rajya Sabha, the nuclear deal with the US is a major feather in Manmohan Singh’s turban.
Foreign Secretary Shivshanker Menon is flying back to India tonight and the Cabinet Committee on Security will meet over the next week to clear the deal. With that, the US government goes back to its Congress with the text. Its enough to make the deal public.
In the end, though, Delhi get exactly what it has wanted from the beginning : The right to reprocess spent fuel from civilian nuclear reactors, as well as a very delicately worded compromise on fuel assurances from the American side.
Still, when the story of the Indo-US nuclear deal is written, the award for the hero of the hour must go to Bush’s key aide and US national security adviser Steve Hadley.
It was with Hadley that NSA MK Narayanan has been confabulating for the last many months, to him that Naryanan made the proposal for a separately safeguarded storage facility to reprocess the spent fuel on the eve of the Heilingendamm talks in Germany in early June.
It was Hadley who called Narayanan on Thursday morning and said, ``On your way to meeting the Vice-President (Dick Cheney) at 2 pm, could you drop by my office please?’’
Narayanan dropped by, and the rest as they say, is Indo-US nuclear history.
It was in this meeting that Hadley and Narayanan broke the logjam of fuel assurances for India in perpetuity for India’s civilian nuclear reactors.
Narayanan had argued that the US must live up to the promise given by Bush in Delhi on March 2 that it would help India with its civilian nuclear programme, promising fuel in perpetuity in exchange for safeguards in perpetuity.
In the end, in his 30-minute meeting with Cheney, Narayanan and he spent only two minutes discussing civil nuclear issues.
The day before, the US side had already agreed to give India reprocessing rights, that is, Delhi would be allowed to reprocess the spent fuel from its reactors in the safeguarded storage facility.
Now with Hadley and Narayanan working out a delicate compromise on the US ``right to return,’’ which dictates all nuclear assistance to any country by law, and what would happen in a hypothetical situation if India tested, the deal was as good as done.
By Friday lunchtime, when all sides met and toasted each other, it transpired that the brasstacks negotiators, that is India’s S. Jaishanker and the US’ Richard Stratford had spent about 300 hours in negotiations.
A joint press release said ``the discussions were constructive and positive, and both undersecretary Burns and Foreign Secretary Menon are pleased with the substantial progress made on outstanding issues in the 123 agreement.’’
US diplomats argued that fuel supply guarantees for India were as important as giving India the right to reprocess. According to US law, if any offending country (such as India) conducts a nuclear test, then the US will have the right to invoke the ``right of return'' clause, that is, ask for all the nuclear fuel as well as all the equipment sent to India.
But top diplomats from Washington said the harsh reality was that even if India ever went nuclear, the US would never be able to invoke the requisite law.
``You can never put the toothpaste back into the tube. If the US gives India large amounts of nuclear fuel as well as a bunch of nuclear reactors, the truth is that a few billion dollars of US investment in India will effectively tie down America's hands,'' the diplomat said.
ENDS
Hamid Ansari is India's man of the hour
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, July 20, 2007 : As the grainy images of Saddam Hussein, with the noose around his neck and a handful of Kurds taunting the former dictator were flashed around the world over new year’s eve, thousands of Indians were appalled with the brutal act of American revenge.
The Ministry of External Affairs, at the time visibly warming up to a nuclear deal with the US that would help India arrive on the high table, feebly announced that it was ``disappointed’’ with the US move.
But one former Indian diplomat, Hamid Ansari, who had earned his spurs in the same elite Foreign Service, was not afraid to speak up.
Pointing out that the hanging had taken place on Eid, a day of celebration for Muslims all over the world, Ansari said in an interview with rediff.com : ``Why has Saddam been executed today? This is not a measure of justice, this is a measure of revenge and celebration…The timing of Saddam’s hanging is vicious and cannot be accidental.’’
As chairman of the National Minorities Commission, you could argue it was none of Ansari’s business to speak out on such a major incident. After all, he was no longer only a private citizen.
That is the point, though. The mild-mannered Hamid Ansari may be soft-spoken, but when he wishes he can make himself heard very clearly.
Perhaps the fact that he was born in loquacious Calcutta in 1937 has something to do with it. Ansari’s father was an insurance man, so he traveled to Shimla to do his schooling, but returned to Calcutta in the Fifties to invest in his growing-up years at St. Xavier’s college. From here he went to the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), where he was to return four decades later as its Vice-Chancellor.
Ansari is, of course, best known as a scholar of West Asia. After he joined the IFS in 1961, he specialised in the Arab world, where he spent many years as ambassador on both sides of the Shia-Sunni divide, in Saudi Arabia (where he was posted thrice) and Iran, Afghanistan and the UAE. Ansari speaks both Arabic and Persian, but he can turn on the charm in Urdu, Hindi and English equally fluently.
Although the Left is being credited with picking Ansari as a Vice-Presidential candidate today, fact is, as Chief of Protocol (from 1980-85), he often rubbed shoulders with Indira Gandhi, who took such close and personal interest in foreign affairs. And so in 1983, when Mrs Gandhi organised what must still rank as one of India’s best conferences ever, the Non-Aligned Summit (when Fidel Castro gave Indira Gandhi a bear hug), Ansari was in minute-to-minute control of what was happening.
Former journalist Dilip Padgaonkar, now a co-member of the Minorities Commission says that when Ansari isn’t getting what he wants, he becomes even more amiable. So when the Commission report on the abysmal conditions of Muslims displaced by the Gujarat riots of 2002 was going nowhere, Ansari employed his persuasive skills to cut through the political-bureauratic slack of Delhi – at an iftaar party hosted by the PM last year – to ensure that the PM read the report.
The Home ministry is now implementing those recommendations.
And as for the criticism that Ansari has not been in active political life, friends argue that he has had enough experience with people – and nations – both as India’s permanent representative at the UN and as V-C of AMU. ``If you’ve served in the academic council of the AMU,’’ said a friend, ``handling the sound and fury of the Rajya Sabha is a piece of cake.’’
Padgaonkar recalls the time when he and Ansari, as representatives of the Minorities Commission, travelled to Nandigram a couple of months ago, trying to inquire why 14 people had died in police firing. Were they ``real’’ policemen, the two asked the question again and again, or were they CPM party cadres dressed up in police clothing?
When scores of villagers repeatedly answered that the massacre had indeed been conducted in cold blood by party cadres, Ansari asked how they were so sure?
Then one man replied : ``The uniform on real policemen are usually very tight because they have such fat stomachs. But most party cadres are thin, so the uniforms were hanging on them. Moreover, regular policemen wear leather shoes. Here, these men were wearing rubber chappals.’’
The Nandigram report, after conversations with Buddhadev Bhattacharjee and Gopal Gandhi, found that the killings may have been the result of colossal state failure, but they were not a communal incident.
ENDS
New Delhi, July 20, 2007 : As the grainy images of Saddam Hussein, with the noose around his neck and a handful of Kurds taunting the former dictator were flashed around the world over new year’s eve, thousands of Indians were appalled with the brutal act of American revenge.
The Ministry of External Affairs, at the time visibly warming up to a nuclear deal with the US that would help India arrive on the high table, feebly announced that it was ``disappointed’’ with the US move.
But one former Indian diplomat, Hamid Ansari, who had earned his spurs in the same elite Foreign Service, was not afraid to speak up.
Pointing out that the hanging had taken place on Eid, a day of celebration for Muslims all over the world, Ansari said in an interview with rediff.com : ``Why has Saddam been executed today? This is not a measure of justice, this is a measure of revenge and celebration…The timing of Saddam’s hanging is vicious and cannot be accidental.’’
As chairman of the National Minorities Commission, you could argue it was none of Ansari’s business to speak out on such a major incident. After all, he was no longer only a private citizen.
That is the point, though. The mild-mannered Hamid Ansari may be soft-spoken, but when he wishes he can make himself heard very clearly.
Perhaps the fact that he was born in loquacious Calcutta in 1937 has something to do with it. Ansari’s father was an insurance man, so he traveled to Shimla to do his schooling, but returned to Calcutta in the Fifties to invest in his growing-up years at St. Xavier’s college. From here he went to the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), where he was to return four decades later as its Vice-Chancellor.
Ansari is, of course, best known as a scholar of West Asia. After he joined the IFS in 1961, he specialised in the Arab world, where he spent many years as ambassador on both sides of the Shia-Sunni divide, in Saudi Arabia (where he was posted thrice) and Iran, Afghanistan and the UAE. Ansari speaks both Arabic and Persian, but he can turn on the charm in Urdu, Hindi and English equally fluently.
Although the Left is being credited with picking Ansari as a Vice-Presidential candidate today, fact is, as Chief of Protocol (from 1980-85), he often rubbed shoulders with Indira Gandhi, who took such close and personal interest in foreign affairs. And so in 1983, when Mrs Gandhi organised what must still rank as one of India’s best conferences ever, the Non-Aligned Summit (when Fidel Castro gave Indira Gandhi a bear hug), Ansari was in minute-to-minute control of what was happening.
Former journalist Dilip Padgaonkar, now a co-member of the Minorities Commission says that when Ansari isn’t getting what he wants, he becomes even more amiable. So when the Commission report on the abysmal conditions of Muslims displaced by the Gujarat riots of 2002 was going nowhere, Ansari employed his persuasive skills to cut through the political-bureauratic slack of Delhi – at an iftaar party hosted by the PM last year – to ensure that the PM read the report.
The Home ministry is now implementing those recommendations.
And as for the criticism that Ansari has not been in active political life, friends argue that he has had enough experience with people – and nations – both as India’s permanent representative at the UN and as V-C of AMU. ``If you’ve served in the academic council of the AMU,’’ said a friend, ``handling the sound and fury of the Rajya Sabha is a piece of cake.’’
Padgaonkar recalls the time when he and Ansari, as representatives of the Minorities Commission, travelled to Nandigram a couple of months ago, trying to inquire why 14 people had died in police firing. Were they ``real’’ policemen, the two asked the question again and again, or were they CPM party cadres dressed up in police clothing?
When scores of villagers repeatedly answered that the massacre had indeed been conducted in cold blood by party cadres, Ansari asked how they were so sure?
Then one man replied : ``The uniform on real policemen are usually very tight because they have such fat stomachs. But most party cadres are thin, so the uniforms were hanging on them. Moreover, regular policemen wear leather shoes. Here, these men were wearing rubber chappals.’’
The Nandigram report, after conversations with Buddhadev Bhattacharjee and Gopal Gandhi, found that the killings may have been the result of colossal state failure, but they were not a communal incident.
ENDS
India is stirred and shaken by South Africa
JYOTI MALHOTRA
New Delhi, July 18, 2007 : Stirred by South Africa’s success in introducing women to top leadership positions, but refusing to be shaken by the abysmal Indian comparison, Congress president Sonia Gandhi now wants first-hand lessons from none other than the African National Congress when she visits South Africa in August.
South African foreign minister Nkosazana Dlamnini Zuma, in the capital for the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) foreign ministerial meeting, was all set for a short courtesy call on Sonia Gandhi last evening.
But when she began telling her about the ANC’s overwhelming success in introducing Black women into top leadership positions in business, politics as well as in the civil services, the meeting went on for more than an hour.
Zuma is said to have told her : ``India is a big country, you cannot change it much in five years. But what about the legacy you’re going to leave behind? You must introduce power in top leadership positions, so that they can exercise power.’’
``Sonia Gandhi was over the moon about what we told her,’’ said Jerry Matsila, Foreign Secretary of South Africa, a former high commissioner to India and a key figure in the ANC.
Turns out that Sonia is going on a part nostalgia-part diplomatic trip to South Africa next month, when she will give a lecture in Cape Town, emphasise fraternal relations with ANC leaders, travel to Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for 26 years during the apartheid years, and visit some Mahatma Gandhi sites around Durban.
Now Zuma’s vivid description to Sonia about the ANC’s success in empowering Black women in the new South Africa seems to have the Congress president all charged up.
So at the ANC headquarters in Johannesburg, Sonia will be given a full presentation of the South African story, complete with audits and checking mechanisms, Matsila said.
Seems the Congress President briefly tried to defend the home team, by telling Zuma about India’s intervention at the panchayat level, how 33 per cent women necessarily had to be elected as sarpanches.
But the South African minister simply smiled the Indian leader’s success away.
Then she began to reel out the statistics : Of South Africa’s 110 ambassadors worldwide, 39 were women, the largest number in the world. As much as 60 per cent of the $70 billion annual budget was in the hands of women ministers who could decide how to spend it. Moreover, a South African company could only bid for a state tender if at least 25 per cent of that company was held by women.
``In the last 13 years since South Africa became free in 1994, we have created a Black middle class that now accounts for 17 per cent of the population,’’ Matsila said, pointing out that a large percentage of them were now women.
So who was responsible for this gender bias? ``It’s the ANC spirit of course,’’ said Matsila, ``we fought for our country’s freedom, and now we know we have to build an egalitarian society. Mandela showed us the way. President Mbeki personally looks at updates at what and how his Cabinet ministers are doing on this score. We know that empowering women is the only way to do it,’’ he added.
ENDS
New Delhi, July 18, 2007 : Stirred by South Africa’s success in introducing women to top leadership positions, but refusing to be shaken by the abysmal Indian comparison, Congress president Sonia Gandhi now wants first-hand lessons from none other than the African National Congress when she visits South Africa in August.
South African foreign minister Nkosazana Dlamnini Zuma, in the capital for the India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) foreign ministerial meeting, was all set for a short courtesy call on Sonia Gandhi last evening.
But when she began telling her about the ANC’s overwhelming success in introducing Black women into top leadership positions in business, politics as well as in the civil services, the meeting went on for more than an hour.
Zuma is said to have told her : ``India is a big country, you cannot change it much in five years. But what about the legacy you’re going to leave behind? You must introduce power in top leadership positions, so that they can exercise power.’’
``Sonia Gandhi was over the moon about what we told her,’’ said Jerry Matsila, Foreign Secretary of South Africa, a former high commissioner to India and a key figure in the ANC.
Turns out that Sonia is going on a part nostalgia-part diplomatic trip to South Africa next month, when she will give a lecture in Cape Town, emphasise fraternal relations with ANC leaders, travel to Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for 26 years during the apartheid years, and visit some Mahatma Gandhi sites around Durban.
Now Zuma’s vivid description to Sonia about the ANC’s success in empowering Black women in the new South Africa seems to have the Congress president all charged up.
So at the ANC headquarters in Johannesburg, Sonia will be given a full presentation of the South African story, complete with audits and checking mechanisms, Matsila said.
Seems the Congress President briefly tried to defend the home team, by telling Zuma about India’s intervention at the panchayat level, how 33 per cent women necessarily had to be elected as sarpanches.
But the South African minister simply smiled the Indian leader’s success away.
Then she began to reel out the statistics : Of South Africa’s 110 ambassadors worldwide, 39 were women, the largest number in the world. As much as 60 per cent of the $70 billion annual budget was in the hands of women ministers who could decide how to spend it. Moreover, a South African company could only bid for a state tender if at least 25 per cent of that company was held by women.
``In the last 13 years since South Africa became free in 1994, we have created a Black middle class that now accounts for 17 per cent of the population,’’ Matsila said, pointing out that a large percentage of them were now women.
So who was responsible for this gender bias? ``It’s the ANC spirit of course,’’ said Matsila, ``we fought for our country’s freedom, and now we know we have to build an egalitarian society. Mandela showed us the way. President Mbeki personally looks at updates at what and how his Cabinet ministers are doing on this score. We know that empowering women is the only way to do it,’’ he added.
ENDS
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