By IANS,
New Delhi : The first formal talks between India and Pakistan since the Mumbai attacks threatened to blur the distinction between fact and fiction as far as 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed was concerned.
The Indian side was shocked and outraged at Pakistan Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir, a veteran diplomat well regarded in India, describing India’s detailed evidence against Jamaat-ud-Dawa ideologue Saeed glibly as “literature rather than evidence” last week.
Peeved Indian officials reacted by letting it on that such utterances showed a certain casual approach on Islamabad’s part to India’s concerns over cross-border terror.
It’s not that Bashir did not realise the damaging import of his words as he quickly corrected himself later in a nationally televised press conference, saying he did not mean to be “dismissive” of Indian concerns. But the damage had been done. Who knows better than diplomats that words can make or mar a relationship in diplomacy?
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Will Nirupama Rao go to Islamabad?
The foreign secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan have been greeted with cynicism on both sides. A Pakistani newspaper damned the exercise in a rather dramatic way: “meaningless talks end in a meaningless way”. In India, the general impression was that although a small beginning has been made, the ties remain frosty.
But there is more to it than meets the eye.
Informed insiders say that for all the Indian denials about future talks, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao is likely to take up her counterpart’s invitation to visit Islamabad some time in March-April, before the leaders of the two countries meet for the SAARC summit in Thimphu. It’s premature, in other words, to write off the Feb 25 talks as a failure.
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New-look climate team
India will have a new-look team when global climate negotiations resume in Bonn this summer. But the look has not been determined yet, and there is furious lobbying going on to be part of it.
The prime minister’s special envoy on climate change, Shyam Saran, has already resigned from his post, and senior member of the team Chandrashekhar Dasgupta has publicly stated he will not be part of the team any more. This gives Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh virtually a free hand to constitute the negotiation team.
But apart from senior bureaucrats in his ministry, it is not yet known whom Ramesh will choose. Insiders say he may ask veteran scientist M.S. Swaminathan to play a more active role.
But negotiations at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change entail hours of sitting through closed door meetings where every comma is fought over and the architect of India’s Green Revolution in agriculture may not be up to that, former members of the team point out.
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Patil getting there
She may not have the same appeal and pull as her predecessor A.P.J. Abdul Kalam who earned the sobriquet of the ‘People’s President’ but Pratibha Patil is slowly getting there and aggressively wooing the press.
Ahead of the budget session of parliament, Patil held a special dinner for senior scribes at Rashtrapati Bhavan. Though she arrived late and did not mingle with journalists, many were just happy to be in the Presidential Palace to enjoy a meal with her.
It does not stop there. Patil now hopes to meet up with over 100 women journalists on March 8 on the occasion of International Women’s Day. Women’s groups around the world choose different themes each year to reflect global and local gender issues. Now many are wondering if Patil is going to choose any particular cause.
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Didi’s favourite
A feverish guessing game is on as to who is Mamata Banerjee’s closest confidant in the Trinamool Congress. If you thought it was the firebrand Sudip Bandyopadhyay or other leaders like Kalyan Banerjee or Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, you are wrong.
It is Mukul Roy, minister of state in the ministry of shipping, who has quietly worked his way up, say insiders close to Didi.
Roy rose up the ranks, especially after he did a good job running down the Left Front government on the alleged ‘muder conspiracy’ to bump off Didi in October. He is currently a Rajya Sabha MP and is expected succeed Banerjee in the railway ministry if she becomes the next West Bengal chief minister in 2011.
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Dancer trio at Delhi dos
Kuchipudi dancer Raja Reddy and his two wives, Radha and Kaushalya, are fast turning socialites. They are almost everywhere – at book launches, award ceremonies, art shows and soirees in the capital.
According to friends close to them, it lends glamour to an event to see a dashing dark Indian ‘raja’ walk in with his two wives. The event also adds a special charm, especially at literary dos peopled by foreign writers and expats where India is either sold as a land of Maharajas, princes or snake charmers or “slumdog millionaires”.
The trio is in complete harmony with each other even when they share a drink or shake a leg at parties.
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Tharoor on board
When the list of ministerial delegates for the prime minister’s Saudi Arabia visit was being finalised, there was a bit of a tug of war for the minister of state slot, with both Shashi Tharoor and his predecessor E. Ahamed – both MPs from Kerala – keen to be on board.
Ahamed, who is now minister of state for railways, had been in charge of the Gulf region when he was in the external affairs ministry and has been a regular visitor to the area.
Till the last moment, the suspense was killing as to who would accompany Manmohan Singh who has taken along with him cabinet ministers Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma and Murli Deora.
However, Tharoor finally emerged the winner, accompanying the prime minister to the country’s largest oil supplier since Indira Gandhi went there way back in 1982.
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Who sets Pakistan’s agenda?
Indian diplomats were not expecting a long-winded diatribe by the soft-spoken Pakistan foreign secretary at a nationally televised conference. With the Indian side publicly declaring that terrorism topped the agenda, Salman Bashir held forth for around 90 minutes on Kashmir and how Pakistan was a bigger victim of terrorism.
Pakistan has suffered 100 Mumbais, he said, giving detailed statistics about more than 5,000 Pakistanis who have died in over 1,000 terror attacks in the last two years.
This victim narrative didn’t impress India. On the contrary, Indian officials hit back by telling select journalists that this is what happens when men in khaki set the agenda.
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Sharma hunts for seat
Commerce Minister Anand Sharma, whose term as a member of the Rajya Sabha from Himachal Pradesh is coming to end in about a month, is a worried man. He is desperately looking for a nomination from Haryana.
Sharma has been in politics of Himachal Pradesh for almost three decades but has not won an assembly or parliamentary election. His elevation as a cabinet minister in UPA-II (he was minister of state in UPA-I) came as a surprise to many and put him almost on the same pedestal as his party senior Virbhadra Singh.
Congress sources say Sharma is on a massive drive and has sought the support of Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda in securing his Rajya Sabha nomination and has also talked of his familial connections with the state.
Last heard, Sharma also attended the wedding of Chief Minister’s son Deepender Singh Hooda last week in Jaipur.
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What makes Antony upset?
Usually ebullient and unfazed, Defence Minister A.K. Antony is said to be extremely upset on two counts, especially after the union budget.
He is cross, first, at the minute rise in the defence budget for 2010-11, especially with his concerted push for modernisation of the forces and, secondly, at the fact that the armed forces have returned a whopping Rs.7,000 crore allocated to it for purchasing arms and other equipment in the current fiscal.
“The minister has nothing to say,” an aide said. This was in sharp contrast to the last three years, when Antony had happily welcomed the budgetary allocations.
For the record, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has allocated Rs.147,000 crore for defence in 2010-11 against Rs.141,703 crore in the current fiscal.
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CJI is KGB!
Why is Chief Justice of India (CJI) K.G. Balakrishnan reluctant to put his office under the ambit of the transparency law – the Right to Information Act? Cynics offer an interesting explanation.
They attribute it to the acronym of his name – KGB, the erstwhile Soviet Union’s fabled intelligence and secret service organisation!