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Journalism of Courage
That Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has chosen to strongly defend the decision to vote against Iran at the IAEA twice in the last seven months is a more important political fact than the three-page explanation for the vote, which he placed before Parliament on Friday. The PM has rightly underlined the balance of considerations that went into the Iran vote: the need to maintain close ties with an important neighbour, preserve India8217;s options on energy security, stand by the principled opposition to WMD proliferation and recognise the consequences of Iran8217;s clandestine proliferation with assistance from Pakistan8217;s nuclear Wal-Mart run by A.Q. Khan.
It is not that the left parties do not know the facts about Iranian proliferation. They just don8217;t want them to come in the way of their campaign to put the UPA government on the defensive. If that meant commualising foreign policy by stoking the Muslim political sentiment, then so be it. Making foreign policy an arena of confrontation with the government, the Left has also decided to mount massive protests during the US president8217;s visit to India. The relentless criticism of foreign policy from the Left, the curious silence of the Congress Party on Manmohan Singh8217;s diplomatic achievements, and the DAE8217;s defiance of the government on the Indo-US nuclear pact, together seemed to suggest that the PM was losing nerve. Did the government have the stomach to take many of its diplomatic initiatives, towards the US, Pakistan and China, to their logical conclusion? Or would it be frightened by opposition attacks?
