http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008%5C11%5C09%5Cstory_9-11-2008_pg7_11US president-elect’s ‘no lift’ worries India
* Obama’s phone calls to allies including Zardari even more disturbing for Delhi
NEW DELHI: United States president-elect Barack Obama putting Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh low on the list of world leaders he has telephoned since Thursday, has become a cause of concern to India.
The Indian government’s pretension of India and the US as ‘natural allies’ in the congratulatory messages by President Pratibha Patil and Dr Manmohan Singh fell flat when Obama’s aides said the first nine calls on Thursday were made to ‘US allies’.
The concerns have intensified considering the fact that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari figured among the 15 heads of state Obama has spoken to until now.
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev is the only other leader of an important state who has not been called back by the US president-elect. Obama spoke to the leaders of Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Mexico and South Korea on the first day, all of which are known US allies.
India expected Obama to call Singh at the latest by Friday night, after finishing with the allies, but the expectation was belied.
Besides Zardari, Obama rang up five others – Saudi Arabian leader King Abdullah, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Polish President Lech Kaczynski and Prime Minister Donald Tusk, and Spanish President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.
Presently, Singh is on a 3-day tour of Oman and Qatar and the earliest he can speak to Obama is on Tuesday when he returns to New Delhi. Insiders say Obama might have been annoyed with the way the Indian government deliberately omitted a crucial paragraph from a letter he had written to Singh during his US visit in September. Obama had asserted in the letter that the Indo-US relations would not spiral down under the next US administration and Congress.
The controversial paragraph not publicised, for obvious reasons, talked of Obama forcing a ban on the nuclear tests through the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and halting the fissile material production by India. “I will work to secure ratification of the international treaty banning nuclear weapons testing at the earliest, and then launch a major diplomatic initiative to ensure its entry into force. I will also pursue negotiations on a verifiable, multilateral treaty to end production of fissile material for nuclear weapons,” Obama had written. iftikhar gilani
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/000200811100309.htmNumber of factors why Obama did not call PM: Democrats
Washington (PTI): Senior Democrat officials have said that there could be a number of factors why US President- elect Barack Obama have not called Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh one of which being that he may be planning to meet him next week during the Economic and Financial Summit.
Obama had phoned leaders of more than 15 countries including Australia, Britain, France, Japan, Poland and Pakistan.
The calls that have been made, it is being pointed out, have to do with some of the immediate priority areas in the realm of Obama's foreign policy, including the problem ones like Pakistan.
But one senior source pointed out that if the Indian Prime Minister had called to congratulate the US President-elect and had there been a conversation "then there is no need to call back".
"Please make sure whether Prime Minister Singh called President-elect Obama," the source said.
A former senior official, who had been one of the top foreign policy advisors to the Democrats and to the Obama campaign and is expected to play a major role in the incoming administration pertaining to South Asia, was a little puzzled by the query why the President-elect had not called the Indian Prime Minister.
The norm, the former senior official said, was for foreign leaders to call and offer messages of congratulations.
"It is not the other way around. A President-elect does not call foreign leaders and say 'Listen, I am your new guy in Washington'".
The way a call goes from the President-elect is if he has been unable to speak for some reason at the time of foreign leader calling, the former official added.
An email query from PTI to a senior representative of the Obama Transition Team in charge of media enquiries was not answered at the time of writing.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/FullcoverageStoryPage.aspx?id=2973e82d-8a91-44c7-8182-44da18a37e80USelections2008_Special&MatchID1=4816&TeamID1=6&TeamID2=1&MatchType1=1&SeriesID1=1212&PrimaryID=4816&Headline=Obama+rollback+on+Kashmir%3fObama rollback on Kashmir?
The Barack Obama government-in-waiting has quietly rolled back its campaign talk about a more active US role in the Kashmir peace process.
New talking points issued in the past two weeks for the president-elect and his officials state India and Pakistan need to solve the Kashmir problem "bilaterally" and that they will have full US “support” in this effort.
However, the points, which were approved by Obama’s senior foreign policy team, did not make a decision on whether the appointment of a special envoy on Kashmir would be good or bad, said Teresita Schaffer of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who has seen the document.
In an interview in Time magazine in October, Obama said Kashmir was a place he wanted to “devote serious diplomatic resources to get a special envoy in there, to figure out a plausible approach”. He felt there was “a moment where potentially we could get” the attention of India and Pakistan.
Obama said he had spoken with Bill Clinton about this issue over lunch. During the campaign, Obama repeatedly spoke of a more active Kashmir policy. This was the first time he had spoken of an envoy.
The statement caused considerable concern both in New Delhi and among South Asian experts in the US. Prominent Indian-Americans close to the Obama campaign and various think tank members warned that such a Kashmir move could lose the US the goodwill it had earned by completing the India-US nuclear deal.
The review of the policy is possibly why, when Indian officials met members of Obama’s South Asia team over the past few weeks, the US side did not mention the “K-word”.
Indian officials are sanguine about any Kashmir move, noting both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush began their administrations with abortive peace efforts.
But the Kashmir kerfuffle raises a larger concern: is there anyone in the Obama administration who focusses on long-term India policy and will try to avoid short-term dust-ups over Kashmir, the test ban treaty, climate change and the like. A key reason for Bush’s successful India policy was his willingness to overrule single-issue bureaucrats.
Washington observers say it is unlikely the president-elect has a coherent policy for the subcontinent. “It’s early days and he hasn’t collected his thoughts on South Asia,” said Ambassador E. Ashley Wills, who served in India and Sri Lanka.
“His immediate focus and only focus will be the economy. All other issues will take a back seat,” said Ashok Mago of the lobby group, the US-India Forum.
And as the policy comes together, the many ex-Clinton aides he has absorbed will help shape a more positive agenda.
Sanjaya Baru, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s former media advisor, believed terrorism and economics would be uppermost in the Obama India policy. In a recent article, he noted how Obama had written to Singh in September this year: “I would like to see US-India relations grow across the board to reflect our shared interests, shared values, shared sense of threats, and ever burgeoning ties between our two economies and societies.”
Obama said “our common strategic interests call for redoubling US-Indian military, intelligence, and law enforcement cooperation”.
AuthorTopic: US president-elect’s ‘no lift’ worries India (Read 333 times)
April 16, 2006, 06:02:42 AM
