Author: K.P. Nayar
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: November 13, 2002
URL: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1021113/asp/opinion/story_1377789.asp
Introduction: New Delhi can
never compete with Islamabad in wooing Washington
Nearly a decade of being "nice"
to the Americans as a policy is coming to its logical cul-de-sac in New
Delhi's Raisina Hill. That policy started with stray, isolated gestures
during the days of P.V. Nara- simha Rao's prime ministership, when South
Block was told by 7, Race Course Road, the prime ministerial home, that
the United States of America was the most important foreign policy priority
for India and that the Americans needed to be wooed.
These individual instances of taking
that extra step to please the Americans became sacrosanct and was converted
to policy once Frank Wisner arrived in New Delhi as the US ambassador.
The mandarins of South Block are sticklers for protocol. They were horrified
when the then foreign secretary decided to invite Wisner to his official
residence at 3, Circular Road for dinner within days of his arrival.
Not even a tentative date had been
discussed for Wisner to present his credentials to the rashtrapati. Diplomatic
convention dictates that a new ambassador does not meet officials of his
host country until after he has presented credentials. Such a convention
is not limited to India. It applies to all world capitals except a few
like Washington, where the president has no time for ambassadors for months
and months after they have arrived.
Or Baghdad, where Saddam Hussein
may never receive an ambassador's credentials at all, as it happened to
the previous Indian ambassador to Iraq. In Washington, they get over this
problem by asking ambassadors to function as ambassadors right away after
the state department goes through the formalities, pending the formal credentials
ceremony at the White House.
In Baghdad, on the other hand, several
meetings are fixed with the president, the ambassador is driven to different
locations, his cars are switched for reasons of security and the ceremony
is aborted at the 11th hour and 59th minute as a message comes on the cell
phones of protocol officials that Saddam feels it is unsafe for him to
present himself at the ceremony. With several such aborted credentials
ceremonies behind him, the ambassador finally starts work in sheer desperation
after handing over his letter of credence to the Iraqi foreign ministry.
But to get back to Wisner's experience,
the foreign secretary's dinner invitation to the new US ambassador was
viewed by many then as an affront to the president. Rashtrapati Bhavan
was then engaged in an exercise of streamlining its dealings with foreign
missions and the ministry of external affairs. The foreign secretary's
office first tried to bully the president's secretariat and get Wisner
ahead of the queue of ambassadors waiting for their first formal meeting
with the head of state. The invitation for dinner was extended when the
president's secretariat refused to be bullied and told South Block that
Wisner would have to await his turn like every other envoy who was new
to India. But the cosy dinner chat at 3, Circular Road was a signal from
the MEA that Wisner could start functioning as "His Excellency" without
waiting for the president to receive him, as protocol required.
In the years that followed, as the
print media and television created illusions of a special relationship
between India and the US, it became an unwritten rule not only in South
Block, but also in North Block - even in Akbar Bhavan where protocol, customs
and other issues concerning foreign missions are handled - that officials
had to go that extra mile to be extra nice to the Americans.
Even as other diplomatic missions
grumbled, the US embassy in New Delhi received special treatment in the
issuance of cards which allowed diplomats access to airports right up to
the departure gates to the aircraft, to mention one example of little consequence.
But the trouble with such an attitude, especially in a foreign office,
is that once you bend the rules, there is no limit to the requests you
get and the concessions you are able to make.
That was what happened in the run-up
to Bill Clinton's visit to India in March, 2000. The Americans told the
Indian embassy in Washington that the US marines who were going into India
in connection with the visit would land in New Delhi without visas. The
embassy was appalled. But the Americans said that the Marines were used
to going into countries without having to carry their passports. In fact,
many of them had no passports. But the embassy stood its ground, and in
the end, every US Marine who went to India carried a valid passport with
a visa for India duly stamped on the document.
More recently, when the secretary
of state, Colin Powell, was going to New Delhi, some smart alec in the
Indian government proposed that journalists accompanying Powell should
be issued gratis visas by the Indian mission in Washington. The proposal
may have been carried out but for another official who said it would create
a scandal in the Indian media. Because the US embassy and consulates in
India charge the usual fees from journalists - even those accompanying
Indian prime ministers to the US. Reciprocity, for a change, won the day.
The change in attitude that Raisina
Hill is now going through does not mean that officials will henceforth
be nasty to the Americans. Not at all. It only means that protocol will
strictly apply to the Americans just like anyone else. Several factors
have prompted such a change. There is a new minister for external affairs
and his minister of state has put in his papers. South Block also has a
new foreign secretary. Unlike his well-liked, but comprehensively ineffective
predecessor, Kanwal Sibal is determined to exercise his authority, judgment
and discretion.
So when Powell packed his bags to
leave for New Delhi in July, it was put to the new minister in South Block,
Yashwant Sinha, and to the prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, that protocol
should take precedence over gestures. Sinha was convinced that Powell should
only meet him and not the prime minister.
This was not meant as a snub to
the visiting secretary of state. Sibal took the view that all visiting
foreign ministers should only meet their Indian counterpart and not run
around New Delhi chatting with everyone from Sonia Gandhi to Chandra Shekhar.
That was no way to do business with foreign governments. Powell would not
have met either Vajpayee or the deputy prime minister, L.K. Advani, in
July if the Indian embassy in Washington had not raised Cain.
The Indian ambassador to the US,
Lalit Mansingh, pointed out that the president, George W. Bush, had received
Jaswant Singh, Sinha's predecessor in South Block, in the Oval Office.
Bush had spent 25 minutes with Advani while he was meeting the national
security adviser, Condoleeza Rice, in her office. The defence secretary,
Donald Rumsfeld, had received Jaswant Singh, when he was defence minister,
with special honours.
The ambassador's rationale was grudgingly
accepted at 7, Race Course Road, but in the process neither the British
foreign secretary, Jack Straw, nor his French counterpart, Domin- ique
de Villepin, who were both in India around the same time as Powell, got
to meet Vajpayee. Protocol could not be jettisoned again and again.
Sinha and Sibal also believe that
niceties are no substitute for policy. Being nice can help, but only upto
a point. Besides, south Asia, they reckon, is entering a new period of
hard, often uncomfortable, realities in its dealings with the US. Look
carefully at what is happening within Pakistan. And the changes that are
taking place in US-Pakistan relations.
Most people in India did not even
notice a prophetic statement to Pakistan television by Richard Haass, the
director of policy planning at the state department, when he was in Islamabad
after his visit to India last month: "I don't think it is any exaggeration
to say that out of all of our bilateral relationships, probably the US-Pakistani
relationship is the most changed for the better over the last year or two
years. This change was already happening before September 11th. When we
came into office, we were determined to improve the US-Pakistani relationship
- which, by the way, had begun to improve somewhat even under the previous
administration, toward the end. It is quite remarkable how far we have
come. Pakistan now is, I think, one of the top four recipients of US assistance
programs...Our militaries are cooperating much more...So I think there
has really been extraordinary progress."
The question that was asked of Haass
did not require such an effusive reply. He could have got away with much
less. That he said what he did only shows that he meant every word of it.
And that is something which South Block is beginning to grasp as the dust
settles on the events since September 11, 2001. Meanwhile, within Pakistan,
the only common thread among the various political parties - make no mistake
on this score - is their competing claims to get into America's good books.
Soon after the elections in her country, Benazir Bhutto was in Washington
trying to convince the assistant secretary of state, Christina Rocca, that
her party was the best bet for the Americans.
The very first statement, after
the elections, by the alliance of Islamic parties, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal,
said: "We are ready to cooperate with the US in the war against terrorism,
but the Americans should not expect support from us in the war against
Islam or Muslims." Why, right from the morrow of the September 11 terrorist
attacks, the MMA had word from Bush himself that America's war is against
terrorism and not against Islam.
So the Islamic parties in Pakistan
would have reason to cooperate with the US if and when the need for such
cooperation arose in Washington. In any case, Indians should not forget
that Maulana Fazlur Rehman, the MMA's choice for prime ministership, used
to be an honoured guest at the state department in the first half of the
last decade when he was chairman of the Pakistan national assembly's foreign
relations committee and an ardent international lobbyist for the taliban.
In the final analysis, the whole
of Pakistan and its political establishment - including the Islamic parties
- are like ripe fruit for the Americans to pick from. India is different,
and therefore, New Delhi can never compete with Islamabad in wooing Washington.
Which is why there is a new, hard look at foreign policy now under way
in the MEA and in the prime minister's office.
