•Shekhar Gupta: Hello and welcome to the walk the talk and guest this week Peter Mandelson, Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. In fact If I amy put it more simply in Indian Terms an exact counterpart of Kamal Nath in the UK cabinet. A friend of India and a frequent visitor.

Peter Mandelson: I am a friend of India. Quite a passionate one and I know I have through my visits here a lot of friends who I value. I goes back of course to my grand father,who was deputy prime minister in the post war labour government of Clement Atlee. He was also a great friend of the first Indian High commissioner Krishna Menon. And I have a photograph on Independence Day for India.

•Shekhar Gupta: He must have had great skills for I don't think Krishna Menon made friends easily.

Peter Mandelson: But then that is what some people said about my grantd father as well. They weren't really right about that. We have a wonderful photograph of the new flag being put above the India House; my grandfather representing the british governmetn and Krishna Menon repersenting India.

•Shekhar Gupta: So from Krishna Menon to Kamal Nath we have come a long way…because kamal nath is somebody who makes friends easily.

Peter Mandelson: He does make friends easily. He is a clever, charmig, difficult guy when you are negotiating with him. He is very dogged. He has a particulr view and it is diffult to get hiom to move off that ground. He represents the interests as he sees it of his country, in our case the trade negotiations of his farmers.

... contd.