The Hindu : Call to restore NAM's voice

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Feb 20, 2003

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Call to restore NAM's voice

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI Feb. 19. The Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, today spoke out against war; stating that there should be no war — be it between the U.S. and Iraq or India and Pakistan. He was replying to Ramdas Athavale's query during question hour as to why India desisted from attacking Pakistan to settle all issues once for all.

Later, during the discussion on Rule 193 on the Iraq issue, Mani Shankar Aiyar (Congress), criticised the Government for rejecting the Opposition's offer to help articulate India's position on the Iraq situation ahead of NAM. Critical of the Government's submissive attitude towards the U.S., he urged Mr. Vajpayee to take a position at Kuala Lumpur befitting the Prime Minister of a founder country of NAM.

For the most part, Mr. Aiyar dwelt on NAM's relevance in a unipolar world, and made out a case for resurrecting its earlier status as a ``voice of peace''.

Lamenting the loss of India's voice of authority in the comity of nations over the past decade — a time-frame he chose to underline the fact that he was not being partisan — he said Iraq should be used to give a new direction to the country's foreign policy which has been confused of late.

Caustic in his approach and scathing in his criticism of the U.S. and its fellow war-mongers, the Congressman said NAM ought to join forces with the Paris-Berlin axis emerging against the Washington-London strongarm tactics. Since NAM has the strength of numbers and the resurgent old Europe is an entity Washington listens to, Mr. Aiyar was of the view that the two should come together to create a formidable force. Initiated by Samajwadi Party's Ramji Lal Suman with a plea against war on Iraq when the House met after lunch, the short duration discussion saw the BJP member, V.K. Malhotra, predictably turn the focus of the debate on to cross-border terrorism by Pakistan.

Refusing to subscribe to the civilisational conflict theory, Mr. Malhotra said: ``If the U.S. is committed to the war against terror, then it should train its guns on Pakistan and not Iraq. Instead, the U.S. has accorded Pakistan Most Favoured Nation status, and is pouring dollars into the country which, in turn, is using it to fuel terrorism.''

Support U.N.: ex-PMs

The former Prime Ministers, V.P. Singh, Chandra Shekhar, Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral, today demanded that the United Nations be supported and enabled to find a peaceful resolution of the question of disarmament of Iraq.

"No single leader or duopoly of leaders should assume the right to reorder and refashion the world according to their own desires and requirements,'' they said in a statement.

A crisis of epic proportions was looming large over the world and the universally accepted norms of international relations and conduct among nations were being flouted. The precedents of ignoring the United Nations and world public opinion were being established that would come to haunt even those who had made a predetermined decision to go to war.

"The world is being pushed into all the uncertainties of another war which would cause hundreds of thousands of casualties, force millions to flee from their homes and cause immense suffering for countless children and women," they said.

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