In place: Envoys to US, UK, Russia & Cabinet Secy

As Joint Secretary in Rajiv Gandhi’s PMO in the late 80s, the all-powerful Sen was a key member of Gandhi’s sanctum sanctorum, on his side as the then Prime Minister travelled to more than a hundred countries around the world.

Another Rajiv Gandhi acolyte, Kamalesh Sharma, who retired as India’s permanent representative to the UN in New York a couple of years ago and is currently the UN Secretary-General’s special representative to East Timor, will succeed Sen as High Commissioner to the UK.

Interestingly, the Manmohan Singh government has leaned across the political spectrum to pick out Kanwal Sibal and send him to Moscow, when K. Raghunath retires from there in August. Sibal, who retired in November as Foreign Secretary, was known to be ideologically close to the BJP, often hardline in his views but acknowledgedly competent on the spectrum of issues, from the US to Pakistan.

Sibal is a brother of Kapil Sibal, Science & Technology minister. He has served in Egypt, Turkey, France and was deputy chief of mission in Washington.

Meanwhile, India’s High Commissioner to Sri Lanka Nirupam Sen is being sent to succeed Vijay Nambiar as Permanent Representative to the UN in New York. Sen had been earlier tipped to go to Moscow.

Additional Secretary at headquarters, looking after Administration, Nirupama Rao, India’s first woman spokesperson, has been named to succeed Sen in highly sensitive Sri Lanka. Rao’s skills as an expert on the Sino-Indian boundary issue were also being utilised by former Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra, who had begun the Special Representative dialogue on the boundary with his counterpart Dai Bingguo last year.

The naming of these top officers comes in the wake of the appointment yesterday of Shyam Saran as the new Foreign Secretary.

Highly placed sources here confirmed that no ‘agrements,’ diplomatic jargon for agreements from the government to which ambassadors are accredited, have been sought so far. None, however, is likely to be refused.

The return of the Congress government has especially tied into the fates of both Ronen Sen and Kamalesh Sharma.

Sen quietly retired at the end of April from London, having served for most part of the ’90s as India’s Ambassador to Russia. He was sent there in mid-1992 by Narasimha Rao, when the bilateral relationship was at its lowest ebb.

The Soviet Union had broken up and Russia’s new President Boris Yeltsin was flirting with the US.

There was little time for India. By the time he left six years later, Sen had turned around the relationship so dramatically that it is still talked about as a success story in the MEA.

Sen, who succeeds Lalit Mansingh, will have a clear-cut mandate for taking forward the Indo-US relationship.

A Russia hand, he has served in the US as Second Secretary in San Francisco and also in Bangladesh, Mexico and Germany.