A day after he said ‘‘I was not running after Mr Strobe Talbott, Condoleezza Rice came to call on me in Washington’’, External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh plunged the already difficult diplomacy on the Iran nuclear issue into a deeper mess when he said that New Delhi would revise its vote if the IAEA resolution at its November 24 meeting in Vienna is tougher than the one at the last meeting.Speaking to the media on the margins of a CII function here today, Natwar Singh said: ‘‘If a resolution is placed at the IAEA, which is more severe than the last one, which says that this matter must go to the UN Security Council, I can as Foreign Minister of India tell you that my recommendation to the government will be to revise our vote.’’ He also made a reference to Western powers like US. ‘‘India and Africa should stand together so that no country or group of countries can take unilateral action to reduce countries to what has been done in Iraq.’’ Coming at a time when he is in the centre of a controversy over his alleged dealings with the Saddam regime, the utterances do not augur well for the government which is trying hard to balance its relations with important countries on sensitive issues.
