New Delhi, June 14
Who can forget the famous bear hug Fidel Castro gave to Indira Gandhi when the Cuban leader passed on the chairmanship of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) to the Indian Prime Minister in New Delhi in 1983. Though she blushed, it was probably the only time that Indira Gandhi looked dwarfed by someone as charismatic as she herself was.

But with the end of the Cold War, India drifted away from Cuba with small bilateral trade and even smaller political exchanges between the two countries.

India has apparently woken up to the need to revive its old links with Havana. Winding up his visit to Washington, External Affairs Minister SM Krishna is flying to Cuba to reach out to the leadership of the Latin American country, considered a continental and ideological rival of the US.

Indian officials were at pains to emphasise that no meaning should be read in Krishna clubbing his visits to the US and Cuba, observing that the two countries might be ideologically apart but were not geographically located far from each other.

Though Castro is now old and infirm, his name still creates a strong feeling in the US regardless of the fact that there have been several instances of Washington doing business with Cuba in recent years.

Among the meetings he would hold in Havana, the most keenly watched will be the one Krishna has sought with Castro, particularly since the visit is taking place some two months before the NAM Summit in Iran, another pariah state for the US. India has lately rediscovered the virtues of NAM in a multi-polar world and is trying to revitalise the grouping of more than 100 nations.