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Expanding ties with India, Bush’s highest priority G-4 to up the ante, reaching out to AU today |
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Expanding ties with India, Bush’s highest priority As Indian and U.S. officials finalise last-minute details for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to Washington a senior Bush administration official on Friday noted that there was “no higher priority” for President George W. Bush “than expanding and broadening our relationship with India.” At a background briefing at the State Department, the official noted Mr Bush and Dr Singh have a very strong personal relationship. The grand reception that awaits the Prime Minister in Washington is meant to “convey a sense of respect for India, convey a sense of hope for the relationship and a signal that this relationship is one of the most important relationships that the United States has with any country in the world,” the official said. Indian flags will line the streets of Washington in honour of Dr Singh’s visit. Following his meeting with Mr Bush at the White House on Monday morning Dr Singh will attend a state luncheon hosted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and later a state banquet hosted by Mr Bush. On Tuesday morning, Dr Singh will address a joint session of the U.S. Congress. Following Mr Bush’s meeting with Dr Singh, the two governments are expected to announce bilateral programmes dealing with HIV/AIDS, the environment, information technology, business promotion, financial and economic issues, energy, space cooperation, disaster response, agriculture, science and technology, and even preservation of the endangered Bengal tiger. On the subject of nuclear energy cooperation, the senior administration official said it was likely to figure as “one of the top issues on their agenda on Monday.” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters on Friday: “We believe it is an important visit that signals the increasing depth and breadth of the U.S.-India relationship across a variety of different topics and those have been outlined in the Next Steps for a Strategic Partnership. It covers a wide variety of different areas, from energy to cultural exchanges to the beginnings of a military-to-military relationship.” But even as talk abounds of a flourishing U.S.-India relationship, a prominent Washington analyst warned that the most likely danger confronting the Bush administration’s new strategy towards India “may not be that it ends up being so wildly successful that it threatens other U.S. interests, but that it peters out prematurely — with serious consequences for both New Delhi and Washington.” In a report released this week, “India as a New Global Power: An Action Agenda for the United States,” Ashley J. Tellis notes that unlike his predecessors Mr Bush “has demonstrated a strong desire to transform relations with India, guided by his administration’s understanding of the geopolitical challenges likely to confront the United States in the 21st century.” A senior advisor to Robert D. Blackwill, when the latter was the U.S. Ambassador to India, Dr Tellis is currently a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. He also served on the National Security Council as special assistant to Mr Bush. Part of the responsibility for fostering the bilateral relationship, Dr Tellis says, rests with India. “Given the difficult changes in U.S. policy and law required to satisfy New Delhi, it will become increasingly obvious over time that the Bush administration will have diminishing incentives to accept these burdens if India is unable to demonstrate a new willingness to ally itself with American purposes,” he says. Dr Tellis says unless Indian security managers make conscious efforts to shape their national policies to promote at least tacit coordination with, if not extensive support for, U.S. goals, the strategic partnership that both sides seek will remain elusive, and, by extension, the policy changes of importance to India will defy realization. “The Bush administration understands clearly that differences in perception, and often in interests, will continue to characterize this bilateral relationship, as it frequently does others. Accordingly, what Washington hopes for — at the very least — is that New Delhi becomes sensitive enough to U.S. concerns to avoid reflexive opposition when no vital Indian interests are at immediate risk,” he says. |
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G-4 to up the ante, reaching out to AU today New Delhi, July 16 Minister of State for External Affairs Rao Inderjit Singh told The Tribune, on the eve of the all-important G-4-AU meeting, that though it was not a mission impossible, getting the G-4 resolution passed by the 191-member United Nations General Assembly was not an easy task either. Mr Inderjit Singh, who has interacted with senior officials, of the rank of Foreign Minister or above, of more than 50 countries in his hurricane diplomacy over the past six months, said the G-4 and the AU had to hammer out a joint strategy based on give-and-take. He made it clear that it was a historic moment and the best time now for the G-4 and AU to turn their dream of getting a seat on the UNSC high table into reality. He remarked that both groupings' respective resolutions
were certain to swim or sink together. The Minister, while saying that the exercise was "not a bed of roses", waxed eloquent on how the two groupings could pull it off despite the fact that the AU has such "difficult" countries as Egypt, Algeria, Zimbabwe and Libya who are members of the so-called Coffee Club which is essentially a body opposing G-4. First and foremost, Mr Singh said, the AU needed to give up its immediate right to veto. He disclosed that during his intensive interactions with a large number of officials and government functionaries from African countries, he had put forth the Indian suggestion that the AU should defer its right to veto like the G-4. "We should have a foot inside (the UNSC) and then we can fight from within," the Minister said while elaborating the strategy his immediate boss, External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh and other G-4 Foreign Ministers will be trying on the AU representatives tomorrow. A worrying factor is that Egypt has been working overtime as a spoilsport and trying to prevent a convergence of views between G-4 and AU. However, a silver lining in the otherwise dark scenario is that prominent African countries like Nigeria, Ghana and South Africa are working in the same direction as G-4 and were in favour of the AU adopting a more flexible and realistic approach. "It's a tough job, nevertheless still possible. Getting 128 votes and ensuring none of the P-5 countries exercises the veto is not going to be easy," Mr Singh said. "The African Union holds the key (to the success or failure of the G-4 resolution).
However, the AU has not been able to make up its mind because of conflicting interests within the grouping. The AU is a divided house," he commented. |
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Pervez orders crackdown on extremists Islamabad, July 16 The directive, seen by political observers as a new campaign against extremism following last week’s London attacks, in which three of the four suicide bombers were ethnic Pakistani Britons, were issued at a meeting attended by about 200 senior police and law-enforcement agencies officers from all over the country, including Azad Kashmir and Northern Areas. Speaking at the unprecedented gathering, the President reiterated the government’s resolve not to allow banned militant organisations to resurface using other names. “You must enforce an end to publication and distribution of hate material including pamphlets, booklets and CDs. Writers, publishers and distributors of all such literature must be held accountable in accordance with the law. You must ensure that such material is not available in the markets latest by December this year,” he said. The President said the country was committed to combating sectarianism and terrorism in any form. He made it clear that the government would not tolerate extremism and would continue to combat the menace of terrorism with unflinching determination and force, as it was in the interest of Pakistan’s continued socio-economic progress. President Musharraf said the new measures should not be seen as anti-religion but were meant to curb the ‘extremist minority’ tarnishing the image of Islam. |
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