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Natwar
Singh: Foreign Policy Mess Up
What
others
say..........
Natwar Singh should never have been made the Foreign Minister in
the first place. In less than a week, the self-opinionated Natwar
has come close to undoing the good work done by the Vajpayee
Government in the field of foreign relations. The former career
diplomat has shown a remarkable lack of tact and responsibility in
handling his new job.
With an ossified mindset, this haughty `cold warrior’ has proposed
and then himself disposed in quick succession a lot of pieces on the
chessboard of international diplomacy. He has given notice of
re-ordering this country’s relations with the US only to assert a
few days in the face of open disquiet in Washington that these ties
will continue more or less as before. In one of his hare-brained
ideas, he has talked of a common nuclear doctrine for India,
Pakistan and China. Of course, both China and Pakistan were not
interested in the Indian Foreign Minister’s proposal. China reacted
with complete silence to Natwar’s idea to nix it fully while
Pakistan politely dismissed it as `new and innovative.’
In the coming weeks and months you can trust Natwar to come up suo
motu with many such `new and innovative’ ideas which he will be
obliged to discard as soon as these leave his fervid mind. Arrogance
in thought and behaviour makes for poor diplomacy.
But it is in the context of Pakistan that the new Foreign Minister
indulged his weakness for verbal `innovation’ the most. Keen not to
give credit to the previous Government for its bold initiative in
devising the roadmap for peace with our western neighbour, Natwar
needlessly harked back to the Shimla Agreement as the almost
exclusive format for the Indo-Pak talks.
A petty mind had allowed petty politics to inform his response to
the on-going peace process with Pakistan. Shorn of niceties, Natwar
argued publicly that the Indira Gandhi-Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto pact
alone could be the framework for these talks while the contribution
of the Vajpayee regime in making these possible could be wholly
obliterated. Natwar talked of holding the dialogue with Pakistan
under the so-called “ China model.” Since he had spent time outside
government picking holes in the foreign policy of successive
non-Congress regimes, Natwar was clearly smarting under the
impression that only he knew how to conduct foreign relations while
others were novices at this game. As the foreign policy spokesman of
the opposition Congress Party he had threatened to review the
arrangement between India and Pakistan under which the peace
dialogue was initiated.
Quite predictably, General Musharraf reacted with an unconcealed
anger to the `innovativeness’ of Natwar. He bristled at the idea of
the `China model’ for the Indo-Pak talks. Natwar, still riding the
high horse of the Shimla Agreement, quite churlishly asked the
Pakistan President to consult his Foreign Minister. Given that the
Pakistani ruling elite has strong reservations about the Shimla
Agreement, which reminds it of their humiliation in the Bangladesh
war, given that a new and mutually acceptable framework was in place
in the Islamabad Declaration, there was no need for Natwar to harp
ad nauseam on the Shimla Agreement.
If the 1972 Agreement was such a great document, Natwar owed an
explanation to the nation as to how it had failed to achieve
anything tangible by way of improvement in the Indo-Pak relations.
Indeed, the gains of the Indian armed forces made on the
battleground were squandered by Indira Gandhi on the negotiating
table in Shimla. The Shimla Agreement served no national purpose in
advancing either the cause of peace or the resolution of the
intractable Kashmir dispute. Since the Shimla Agreement,
Pak-inspired mayhem and militancy had been injected into everyday
life in Kashmir. So much for his fealty to the Indira-Bhutto
Agreement.
Now, what is the way ahead on the Indo-Pak front? Mercifully, the
damage had been contained for the time being with the Foreign
Secretary, Shashank, reaffirming in an official statement the new
Government’s faith in the Islamabad Declaration as the framework for
bilateral relations between India and Pakistan. But the danger of
Natwar acting as a bull in a China shop in the Foreign Ministry will
persist so long as he is the External Affairs Minister. He lacks the
requisite behavioural and mental restraint and skills to be a
successful negotiator. Being needlessly combative and arrogant
cannot be equated with consummate diplomacy.Natwar should be moved
out of the MEA before he messes up further with our foreign policy
in general and with the ongoing peace process with Pakistan in
particular.
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The Free Press Journal l |
