Tags:
Journalism of Courage
In claiming that India8217;s refusal to vote against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA meeting next month would kill the Indo-US pact on nuclear cooperation, the American Ambassador David Mulford has presented the UPA government and the Bush administration with a royal mess at a very delicate moment in bilateral relations. Both the governments reacted swiftly to counter the damage. A furious New Delhi rejected the linkage between India8217;s position at the Iran debate in the IAEA and the historic nuclear pact signed last year. Washington rapped the envoy on his knuckles and distanced itself from what it called Mulford8217;s 8220;personal assessment8221;.
When India and the US are struggling hard 8212; just weeks before President George W. Bush is to arrive in the capital 8212; to hammer out a common understanding on Iran8217;s nuclear defiance and the implementation of the nuclear pact, Mulford8217;s intervention has been utterly counterproductive. India and the US are raucous democracies. Public statements from either side quickly feed into the domestic politics of the other and complicate the negotiations between the two governments. India and the US have made much progress in the last few years because they have learnt one hard lesson from the wasted decades of the past: avoid hectoring each other in public. Mulford8217;s remarks are an awful deviation from that sensible rule. There is no denying that for many in the US Congress, the decision to change non-proliferation law in favour of India would critically depend upon India8217;s own attitudes to nuclear proliferation, especially that of Iran. Meanwhile, the UPA government is already under considerable pressure from the Left as well as sections of the Congress to reverse its IAEA vote.
