WASHINGTON, July 22: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who returned home on Friday after a successful visit to the US, indicated a slight change in India’s attitude on several key issues during his four-day stay in the US capital. His comments on the India-Pakistan peace process, terrorism, nuclear proliferation in South Asia and the Iran gas pipeline showed a conscious effort to get closer to the US position on these issues.
Mr Singh, who had agreed during President Pervez Musharraf’s visit to India in April that the India-Pakistan peace process “is now irreversible,” said in Washington on Thursday, “I, as Prime Minister of a democracy, will not be able to go against public opinion if acts of terrorism are not controlled. It affects my capacity to push forward the process of dialogue with Pakistan.”
During President Musharraf’s visit, however, Mr Singh had said that India and Pakistan “would not allow terrorism to impede the peace process.”
At a time when India and Pakistan have initiated talks on nuclear CBMs, Mr Singh spoke of “reckless proliferation in India’s neighbourhood” while talking to Indian journalists before winding up his visit.
He repeated this allegation in an interview to the Washington Post as well, saying: “We have seen in our neighbourhood reckless proliferation in disregard of all international obligations.”
Asked for his opinion on Pakistan’s efforts to have a nuclear deal with the US, similar to the one the US had struck with India, Mr Singh said: “I have to be realistic enough to recognise the role that terrorist elements have played in the last few years in the history of Pakistan. Taliban was created by Pakistani extremists, Wahabi Islam flourished, thousands of thousands madrassas were set up to preach this jihad based on hatred of other religions... and Pakistan is not a democracy in the sense that we know and you know....we have to recognise what has happened.”
In the past, India had also been careful in raising the bogey of a nuclear conflagration in South Asia if religious extremists manage to get hold of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. In fact, more than once India rejected this suggestion, saying instead that it believed Pakistan was quite capable of protecting its nuclear assets.
But in his interview to the Post on Thursday, Mr Singh insisted that extremists could seize Pakistan’s nuclear assets should President Musharraf be replaced. “If they get into the hands of the jihadi elements that could pose serious problems,” he said.
In the past, India had also portrayed the proposed Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline as a pipeline for peace, arguing that it would create economic interests in the peace process. But during his Washington visit, Mr Singh also changed his position on this issue.
While admitting that “we are terribly short of our energy supply and we desperately need new sources of energy, that is why with Pakistan we have agreed to explore possibility of the pipeline”, the Indian prime minister said: “I am realistic enough to say that there are many risks, considering all the uncertainties of the situation there in Iran. I don’t know if any international consortium of bankers would probably underwrite this.”
In March, when US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters in New Delhi that she had communicated to the Indian government, “our concerns about gas pipeline cooperation between Iran and India”, Indian External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh had strongly rejected her apprehensions as incorrect. “We have traditionally good relations with Iran. We expect Iran will fulfil all its obligations with regard to the NPT. We have no problems of any kind with Iran,” was his reply.
