With apologies to T S Eliot — again — Defence Minister George Fernandes may have just broken the ‘‘April is the cruellest month’’ jinx for travel. With the Iraq war mostly out of the way and the SARS epidemic hopefully in control, Fernandes is off to fulfil a much-longed-for dream visit to China. During the week-long trip from April 20, Fernandes is also likely to meet China’s powerful new general secretary Hu Jintao, who incidentally was responsible for Tibet in his younger days. It might be interesting to see how Fernandes, a known Tibetan sympathiser, gets on with Comrade Hu, even as they set the broad framework for Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee’s trip to China later this summer.Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal returns to Moscow later this month, this time for a meeting on the inter-governmental trade commission, soon after which he is off to Dhaka, for talks with his counterpart. After all the hoopla about illegal migration and anti-Indian insurgents operating out of Bangladesh earlier this year — resulting in the visit of Bangladesh Foreign Minister Morshed Khan to Delhi — the Dhaka story seems to have been swept firmly under the carpet. Considering that Commerce Secretaries from both sides have recently met and agreed to resolve tariff differences in a less rash and bloodthirsty manner, progress on the India-Bangla front may just be looking up.Vajpayee: To go or not to go to Syria?The possibility of PM Vajpayee rescheduling his visit to Syria — apart from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan — sometime later in the autumn seems to already have got New Delhi’s foreign policy elite into a blue funk. For a trip whose schedule is still many, many moons away, New Delhi’s nervousness seems extraordinary. Still, it all seems to have been brought on by a visit by Secretary in the MEA, R.M. Abhyankar, to Amman, Damascus — where he meets Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk el-Shara — and Ankara in about ten days’ time. According to the anti-Syrian camp, PM Vajpayee should not be visiting a country which has just been warned by US Defence Secretary Donald ‘‘Rummy’’ Rumsfeld as having aided Iraq in the supply of night-vision goggles during the war. We must take Rummy’s word for it, of course, and who dare argue against Rummy in these exceptionally Biblical times (Rumsfeld ‘‘knew’’ that there were WMD in Iraq, he ‘‘knew’’ that Saddam Hussein had links to terrorist outfits like al-Qaeda.). Anyway, these naysayers argue that Syria is more than likely to be next on the US hit-list, and why should New Delhi expose its moralist flanks, anyway? What did it, for example, gain from a Parliamentary resolution that ‘‘deplored’’ US action in Iraq, especially when the US was winning the war the exact same day?Then there’s the pro-Syrian view in South Block, which simply shrugs its shoulders and wants to know whether India’s foreign policy should be conducted on the banks of the Potomac. How sensitive is Washington to India’s interests, on Pakistan for example, this group wants to know? Moreover, the charms of Syria, even if it’s run by a minority Alawite leader, seem considerable in this election year. There’s Palmyra, Petra.The ‘Gods’ don’t impress ChandrikaInfamous for her belief in the continuum of time, Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga obviously made a huge effort last week to keep her appointments with the Indian leadership — last time around, Home Minister L.K. Advani had walked out from Rashtrapati Bhavan where he had waited interminably to see her — even as she explained to them the fundamentals and the nuances of the peace process. Still, she couldn’t help lapsing back to form on one occasion, when she kept a dinner table with Delhi’s elite waiting till an uncool 11 pm. All those who attended said it was worth the wait.Meanwhile, Kumaratunga is also believed to have found time to meet a few gurus during her Indian sojourn. It all started at the beginning of her trip, when she flew from Bangalore to Puttaparthi to meet Sathya Sai Baba, having been persuaded to do so by none other than her once-estranged brother Anura Bandaranaike (they came together after their mother’s death) and her close friend and Sri Lanka’s former foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar. Evidently, both men pointed out that since Chandrika’s stars were not right till April 17, and that she had to stay out of the country till then, it would help to meet elevated people of a different kind.Still, Kumaratunga is said to have confessed to a friend that she once ‘‘saw’’ Sathya Sai Baba ‘‘remove’’ ash and rings and other such godly appurtenances from behind his back. Her scepticism, about politics at home and Gods abroad, continue to arouse admiration in her friends.‘Rummy’ uncrowns ‘Rani’ Raphel This diary reported a couple of weeks ago that Robin Raphel, once the US pointperson on South Asia that New Delhi loved to hate, was all set to be reincarnated as the new ‘‘Rani’’ of Mesopotamia, also known as Iraq. (Although with the National Museum in Baghdad looted with the apparent connivance of US forces, that distinction looks hazier than ever.) Turns out that Raphel’s appointment has been struck off by none other than Rumsfeld’s Pentagon. Perhaps she’s too ideologically driven even for them, perhaps she’s just not their type. Whatever the real reason, Raphel must wait for another day.
