Kasuri picks on Sinha over bid to shut out Pak

External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha will travel to London to attend a Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) meeting on May 21, t...

External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha will travel to London to attend a Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) meeting on May 21, that will debate the re-entry of Pakistan and Zimbabwe back into the councils of the Commonwealth.

Sinha is expected to stand by India’s decision to oppose Pakistan’s return, despite the mutual peace offerings in recent weeks by New Delhi and Islamabad. In the face of Western consensus that Pakistan should be ‘‘encouraged’’ and ‘‘complimented’’ for its fight against terrorism (read, for the US and against Al Qaeda), Sinha will reflect India’s view that the CMAG’s mandate is only limited to whether or not a country passed the litmus test of democracy or not.

Sinha’s routine participation in a CMAG meeting has, in the last 24 hours, become the subject of another bout of sub-continental hysteria. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri accused Sinha today of deliberately scuttling the spirit of the recent peace moves by his own Prime Minister, by travelling to Botswana barely days after Vajpayee’s offer of talks in Srinagar on April 18.

Quoting Indian press reports, Kasuri pointed out that Sinha’s journey to Botswana, the current head of the CMAG, was made with the express intention of persuading it not to allow Islamabad to return to the Commonwealth. ‘‘If that is true, then Sinha is guilty of an act of commission,’’ Kasuri said. Asked to comment on Kasuri’s statement, an MEA spokesman said ‘‘the less we talk, the better it is for the promotion of bilateral relations.’’

The spokesman said it would not be helpful for Kasuri to become personal as ‘‘there are no personal agendas in India’s foreign policy. We have a cohesive and unified foreign policy.’’ Foreign Office sources, while accepting that Sinha travelled to Botswana, besides Tanzania, in the week after the PM’s speech in Srinagar, to also lobby to keep Pakistan out, insisted that the parameters of the CMAG debate in London three weeks from now could not be amended to suit certain Western nations.

They pointed out that countries like Britain, Australia and Canada wanted to keep Zimbabwe out, because they believed Robert Mugabe had recently rigged the elections in his country. On the other hand, the West wanted to encourage Pakistan for its support in America’s war against terrorism and let it join back.