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Journalism of Courage
At last, the ‘‘economics’’ in ‘‘diplomacy’’ may just be back in fashion. Foreign minister Yashwant Sinha’s hangover from his Finance ministry days is becoming the new buzzword in South Block, with none other than PM Vajpayee giving it his seal of approval at the Army Commanders conference on Saturday—even using it to punctuate New Delhi’s new policy on Pakistan. So if the new government in Islamabad—whenever it comes into being—can offer new ideas about bringing down cross-border terrorism levels, it appears that New Delhi may yet be willing to respond by resuming the diplomatic traffic.
Throw into this witches brew the possibility of real progress on the South Asian Preferential Trading Regime (SAPTA), that the Pakistanis have stalled since March this year, and you may have a real answer to the Shakespearean question, ‘‘When shall we meet again/In thunder, lightning or in rain?’’
Still, Sinha’s insistence that there must be more to SAARC than sarcasm could be about to bear fruit. Sinha, it seems, has been plugging away at his ‘‘economic principle’’ ever since the SAARC foreign ministers met in Kathmandu a couple of months ago, and indeed, expressed surprise that Islamabad had continued to stall a harmless SAPTA meeting from March to July to September. When it still hadn’t taken place when these selfsame foreign ministers met over lunch in New York last month, Sinha turned around and asked Inamul Haq, Pakistan’s minister of state for foreign affairs, why. Soon enough, Islamabad, not least because of Haq, had capitulated. Which is why Commerce Secretary Dipak Chatterjee and all his South Asian counterparts are in Kathmandu even as we speak.
East is Best?
The Prime Minister is leaving for Phnom Penh, Cambodia on Diwali night—November 4—to attend the ASEAN summit with India, a culmination of India’s ‘‘look east’’ policy that began exactly a decade ago under PV Narasimha Rao. Interestingly, ASEAN is also holding, at the same time, its own ASEAN+3 summit with the East Asia giants, China, Japan and South Korea. Since they’re all going to be thrown together, Vajpayee may meet some of his counterparts. (If not Vajpayee, Sinha will.)
Certainly, with Chinese prime minister Zhu Rongji, Vajpayee could get some sense of the Chinese Party Congress that is all set to take place in early November (speculation persists that President Jiang Zemin will retain his positions as general secretary of the Communist Party as well as the chairmanship of the Military Commission, while giving the Presidency to Hu Jintao) as well as, perhaps, come to some conclusions about his own visit to China.
American Red Carpet
The Americans are coming! That Cold War cry has undergone so many octave changes in the South Asian jungle that most leaderships are more than happy to roll out the red carpet for all those men and women from Washington. The guest list this week: Zalmay Khalilzad, the US special envoy on Afghanistan, Treasury secretary Paul O’Neill, undersecretary for Economic affairs Alan Larson, undersecretary for Commerce Kenneth Juster, undersecretary for global affairs Paula Dobryansky and head of policy planning Richard Haas. And if you’re wondering about the emphasis on the economic relationship, remember that old line from US ambassador Robert Blackwill: the Indo-US economic relationship, he once said, continues to be as flat as a chapatti.
