MEA no foreign affair for S M Krishna

S M Krishna may have just taken over as the Union External Affairs Minister,but he already has more than a passing familiarity....

S M Krishna may have just taken over as the Union External Affairs Minister,but he already has more than a passing familiarity with numerous foreign heads of state and other dignitaries. After completing his university degrees in the United States of America,where he actively participated in campus politics during the John F Kennedy years in the 1960s,Krishna in his capacities as the former Karnataka chief minister and Maharashtra governor has interacted with a number of top leaders from around the world.

Though the Ministry of External Affairs may be a different ball game,Krishna established a personal rapport with several key international players during his time as the Karnataka chief minister between 1999 and early 2004. A case in point is the then British prime minister Tony Blair,who visited Bangalore between January 4 and 5 of 2002,with the 9/11 attack in the United States still fresh on everyones mind.

Before getting down to business,Krishna an unabashed Wimbledon fan is reported to have invited Blair to a game of tennis. Later at a Confederation of Indian Industry summit attended by Blair at the Infosys campus,Krishna said,Anything that happens in one part of the world is more likely than not to affect every other part of the world. The events of September 11,and more recently,December 13,have been cruel reminders of this fact. He later stated,The future needs to be addressed and shaped in the context of sustainable global economic development that benefits everybody. We are witness to islands of prosperity in a federation of states. This is true of the global economy also.

The Blair visit was one among nearly two dozen such stopovers made by foreign dignitaries in Bangalore between 1999 and 2004,a time when the citys IT industry began making waves around the world. Blairs was among the key visits that helped the Krishna government get over the setback of being spurned in the year 2000,for Hyderabad,by the then US president Bill Clinton.

While Krishna visited the World Economic Forum at Davos,Switzerland,and organised a global investors meet in his initial days as chief minister to attract attention to Bangalore,the second half of his tenure saw a slew of visits by dignitaries from around the world.

Among the highlights of the External Affairs Ministers chief ministerial tenure in Karnataka are the 2000 visit of the then Japanese prime minister Yoshiro Mori; the 2001 visits of Li Peng the then Chinese National Peoples Congress chairman,German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and the then Thailand prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra; the 2002 visit of Zhu Rongji,the then Chinese premier who famously said,You are number one in software,we are number one in hardware. If we put hardware and software together,we are world number one and the 2003 visit of Jean-Pierre Raffarin,the then French prime minister.

Former Sri Lankan president Chandrika Kumaratunga also came to Bangalore on April 7,2003,during a ceasefire in the war in her country and amid Norway-mediated peace talks with the LTTE. The Sri Lankan premier during the period,Ranil Wickremasinghe,visited Bangalore a little earlier between August 24-26,2002. According to the state protocol records there was also a visit to Bangalore by the former Afghanistan foreign minister Dr Abdullah Abdullah during Krishnas days as chief minister.