Musharraf back on hot spot

Christina Rocca, the US Administration’s pointperson on India, had to cancel her meetings with the Indian Government today — amongst others, she was meeting External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh and Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra — and fly to Islamabad. Reason: the death of an American diplomat’s wife and daughter in yesterday’s church attack in the diplomatic quarter in Pakistan’s capital city has squarely returned the focus on what General Musharraf is doing to control terrorism. Preceding Rocca in Islamabad was Gen Tommy Franks, the head of the US military Central Command, along with a 37-member delegation. Meanwhile, as the killer of Pakistani Interior Minister Moinuddun Haider’s brother remains at large, Fazlur Rahman, the head of the Jamiat-ulema-Islami, was released yesterday after four months of detention.

Anthem is music to Karzai ears

Hamid Karzai, the chief of the Afghan administration, is said to have been extremely impressed with the rendering of the Afghan national anthem by the Indian ceremonial guard during his trip to Delhi a couple of weeks ago. So much so that he is believed to have asked for a copy and notations of the anthem. With the upheaval in Afghanistan these past decades, Karzai said, so much, including the details of the anthem, have been lost.

Even as India’s newest ambassador to Kabul, Vivek Katju, takes over and an I&B delegation carries out extensive discussions to rebuild Afghanistan’s radio & television network, Karzai is also said to have expressed his keenness to visit Shimla — something he wasn’t able to do last time — when he comes again to India.

Preparing the right climate

India's support for Bush’s brand new environmental policy came even before the US President announced his ‘clear skies’ policy on February 14. Evidently, when US Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke to Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh in Madrid (who was there to attend the European Union troika), to tell him about the mid-February visit of General Musharraf, the second item on the telephonic agenda was the Bush climate speech. Even then, Singh is said to have voiced New Delhi’s support for Washington.

According to the MEA, India’s commitment to the Kyoto Protocol remains unchanged, implying that there has been no turnaround in New Delhi’s environmental policies in favour of the US. Analysts point out that Jaswant Singh was actually earning extra brownie points in his so-called ‘‘support’’ for Bush, even when India hadn’t really made any changes in policy at home.

And why not. Earlier initiatives by New Delhi, such as its support of the US National Missile Defense (NMD) policy last April, may in retrospect be described as the ‘‘breakthrough’’ in the bilateral relatiionship (the NMD, interestingly, initially earned Washington a great deal of flak abroad, but the Europeans quietly caved in soon after). The MEA has argued that it is not in the business of being ‘‘evangelical’’ but that foreign policy must be geared to furthering national interest.

That’s a well-taken point. However, the argument of the climate change story was not so much that India was blindly supporting the US. Not even that support was being given even after Bush in his ‘clear skies’ speech practically accused India, along with China, of being an ‘‘irresponsible’’ polluter. But that the MEA did not consult with the Ministry of Environment & Forests when it went ahead with its US-related plans. If one arm of the Government doesn’t know what the other is doing, then surely, something’s wrong somewhere.

Gender-equal passports

There’s good news on the passport application front. Seems that the MEA has finally conceded that there’s a new world out there and New Delhi must at least try and be gender-equal. So, very soon, new passport forms will not ask you only for your ‘Father’ or ‘Husband’s’ name, but that question will be replaced by ‘Parent’ or ‘Spouse.’

Here’s hoping that the rest of the government now takes a leaf out of the MEA’s book and corrects its inegalitarian tendencies.

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