WASHINGTON, SEPTEMBER 12: A scramble has ensued among Washington's power elite for invitations to President Clinton's dinner banquet for Prime Minister A B Vajpayee this Sunday.The reason: It is the last official dinner being hosted by the Clinton WhiteHouse, now in the twilight of its term.According to administration sources, the White House dinner for Vajpayee is expected to feature about 400 guests. Typically, the invitees are those connected in some way to India. Besides the usual suspects in the administration and think tanks, people from the arts and literary world, corporate heavyweights, and India's newly celebrated Silicon Valley stars are expected to be in the line-up.But sources also say that because it is certain to be Clinton's `Last Supper' at the White House, calls for an invitation has come from those not in anyway connected to India or South Asia. In fact, this is the last official visit the Clinton White House is hosting for a visiting leader.One fall-out of this scramble is that Vice-President Gore's luncheon for Vajpayee is being expanded to accommodate more guests. The offices of the President and the vice-president are comparing lists to ensure that the widest range of guests are invited to the two official functions.The India Caucus on Capitol Hill is also hosting a lunch for Vajpayee, but that will be dominated by law-makers, lobbyists, and legislative types.Gore will be hosting his luncheon at the State Department, which has the biggest banquet facility in town after the White House. Some 200 people areexpected to attend the event, including, (depending on her schedule, aides say), Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.Typically, White House dinners for visiting Heads of State are lavish and formal affairs with invitations going out to the cream of society, including immigrant Americans of the same ethnicity as the visiting leader.Although the White House social engagements office always keeps the list of invitees close to its chest to avoid the scramble for invitations, it is notdifficult to surmise a guess list: New Age Guru Deepak Chopra, Citibank honcho Victor Menezes, McKinsey CEO Rajat Gupta, Sitarist Ravi Shankar, film-maker Manoj Night Shyamalan, and Silicon Valley luminaries likeVinod Dham and Sabeer Bhatia are expected to be among the invitees.Guests will also include Americans with India connections like former Washington Post New Delhi correspondent and current managing editor SteveColl and former ambassador Patrick Moynihan.Vajpayee arrives in Washington Wednesday late afternoon local time (early Thursday morning IST) and checks into Blair House located across the street from the White House. Curiously, his ``state visit'' is restricted to only September 15 and 17, the two days during which he will interact with the administration.The Prime Minister's September 14 engagement centres mainly around the Congress and his September 16 meetings will be community affairs. This includes dedicating a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in a park in front of the Indian Embassy on Massachusetts Avenue. The Clinton banquet will be the Prime Minister's last engagement in the United States.Vajpayee, who has been talking about how India emerged from a ``ship-to-mouth'' situation by achieving self-sufficiency in producing foodgrains, will thenpractice ``mouth-to-plane'' diplomacy: he leaves Washington immediately after dinner.
