• The article, ‘Four men & a tough promise,’ by K. Subrahmanyam is a good appraisal of the ongoing initiative by the American bipartisan group on nuclear disarmament. The author is right when he says that “it is unrealistic to talk of a nuclear-weapon-free world unless it is preceded by delegitimisation of the weapon”. Any initiative by American statesmen on a subject like this is suspect, if one may say so, because they presume their country’s strategic concerns take precedence over the interests of the rest of the international community. In juxtaposing India’s interests with America’s, have these gentlemen ever given due consideration to our strategic concerns? Kissinger was Secretary of State during the 1971 Indo-Pak War and the Seventh Fleet was despatched into the Bay of Bengal to frighten us. And he later offered a lame excuse why his country did what it did then. American concerns for human values begin and end with their own country, and of course Israel. Did they utter a word when their country stopped Russia from delivering the cryogenic engine to us when we were pursuing our space programme? Is it that our space programme is suspect and theirs is not?

— Prasad Malladi

Nidadavole

Nationalist BJP?

• Strobe Talbot’s comments in Walk the Talk with Shekhar Gupta, Brajesh Mishra’s interviews and the speech made by the PM in Rajya Sabha, with the appeal to ‘Bhishma Pitamah’ Vajpayee, are a pointer to the fact that the BJP is opposing the deal along with the Left parties not in our national interest but to satisfy the egos of some of the party leaders. This deal could not go through because of the NDA’s defeat in the general election in 2004. One can understand the Left’s opposition, since they are more pro-China than pro-anything-else, but what of the BJP?

... contd.