Robin Raphel, who became America’s first Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, was highly unpopular with Washington-based Indian correspondents, who saw too much in her very first press conference, even though what she said conformed to America’s traditional stance on Kashmir.

Until she became assistant secretary, the State Department didn’t have an AS for South Asia, it being left to the AS for the Middle East to look after the South Asian desk as well.

The decision to have a separate AS for South Asia was taken in August 1993 during the Clinton administration by the man billed as diplomats’ diplomat — Warren Christopher, who decreed that Ms Raphel was to look after Central Asia also.

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Now under investigation for charges not yet specified, Ms Raphel’s first press talk was a little unusual.

It was supposed to be a briefing, though in US journalist parlance ‘briefing’ and ‘press conference’ are synonymous.

Before the press talk began, we were told by the State Department that Ms Raphel was not to be mentioned by name, and that we were to refer to “a senior American official”.

How many times could a reporter repeat this in a story? If, to avoid monotony, he wrote “he”, that would be factually incorrect; and if he wrote “she”, Ms Raphel would be identified.

Nevertheless, I managed it, though there was a lot of awkwardness to language as the story finally appeared in Dawn’s issue of Oct 30, 1993.

During her ‘briefing’, Ms Raphel made the Indian correspondents uncomfortable by repeatedly emphasising the need for a Kashmir settlement and, more important, by pleading with India to stop rights violation by th e Indian army in occupied Kashmir.

The Indians had felt disturbed for two reasons: Ms Raphel was due to fly to South Asia, and earlier, in his speech to the General Assembly, President Bill Clinton had called for a Kashmir solution. (I do not think any other American president has, since then, spoken of Kashmir before the UN.)

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A Sri Lankan journalist, representing an Indian newspaper, asked Ms Raphel whether or not the Clinton speech amounted to internationalising the Kashmir issue.

Ms Raphel replied that Kashmir was a disputed territory, and America wanted Pakistan and India to solve the issue through dialogue.

Seeing too much in the Clinton speech and Ms Raphel’s press talk, an Indian woman journalist said it seemed India was being pressured into “accepting the unthinkable” and writing off Kashmir.

Ms Raphel repeated that Washington had no desire to make India accept the “unthinkable”, that the American stand was that Kashmir was a disputed territory and the two sides should find a peaceful solution.

However, her next answer was made in all seriousness, and that made the Indians wonder.

When the Sri Lankan told Ms Raphel that the Clinton speech had created a storm in New Delhi, she replied it was “easy to create a storm in Delhi”. The Indians were nonplussed.

Unhappy perhaps with the Raphel talk, an Indian correspondent blew the identity and identified her. She made her unhappiness known by keeping the Indian correspondent out of many subsequent state department events.

The writer was Dawn’s Washington Correspondent (1992-95)

Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2014