As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh prepares to meet US President Barack Obama next month in Italy, it will now come in the backdrop of two recent setbacks that have unravelled the entire post-Mumbai diplomacy drive. The listing of Jamaat-ud Dawa and its leader Hafiz Mohammed Saeed under the UN Al-Qaeda and Taliban sanctions resolution was among the high points of the UPA government’s diplomatic offensive after the Mumbai attacks. This move had been put on hold for over a year by China. New Delhi thought the momentum was with it and moved another request for banning Jaish-e-Mohammed head Maulana Masood Azhar, LeT kingpin in the Mumbai train blasts Azam Cheema and key JuD ideologue Abdul Rehman Makki. It was expected to sail through but a few weeks back India learnt that of all countries, the United Kingdom, along with usual suspect China, had put the request on hold by demanding “fresh evidence”. These “procedural holds” are the preserve of UN Security Council permanent members, used as an effective diplomatic tool to serve some unstated purpose. The bad news for India is that its own cause seems somewhat expendable, at least for the time being.

India was outraged and demanding after Mumbai, and rightly so. International support swung in its favour along with sympathy. The outgoing Bush administration went out of the way in exposing the Pakistan links to the Mumbai terror plot and pressed ahead. Obama was, then, among the first to call up the Indian ambassador in the US and offer his unqualified support to whatever the outgoing administration planned to do. Pakistan was under immense pressure, forced to act on several fronts, while offers of future support poured into India. Mandarins in the Ministry of External Affairs revelled at this “high priority” status and now, suddenly, see themselves managing India’s shrinking importance in the discourse on terror, where the reference to India is more platitudinous than substantial.

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