US Embassay assures PM no more visits, CPM placated

“We were informed by the Prime Minister and the foreign secretary that Americans have promised the Government of India that this will not happen again,” party leader Biplab Dasgupta said.

The Marxists in Bengal had kept up their barrage against the American consulate in Calcutta. Chief Minister Jyoti Basu yesterday shot off a letter to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee registering his protest against the investigations conducted by two consular staff in Nanur where 11 farmers were massacred recently.

Basu’s was the second written protest lodged with the Union Government after its party MP, Biplab Dasgupta, had first raised the issue.

In his letter, Basu told Vajpayee that “such a visit by the officials of any consulate or embassy on a fact-finding mission is totally unprecedented during the last 53 years, at least in such an open manner.

“…and I would like to register the protest of the state government in the strongest possible terms against the action of the US Consulate General.”

Basu said when Consul General Christopher J. Sandrolini paid him a visit on Wednesday, “I made it clear to him that … the nature of activity indulged in by these two officials of the US Consulate General amounted to interference in our internal affairs.”

Sandrolini, who paid a visit to Basu’s deputy Buddhadeb Bhattacharya yesterday, however, had refused to speak to the Press.