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Ducking the issue

It has been a clear case of tightrope walking. Amit Baruah on official India's reaction.

CAREFUL NOT to antagonise the United States, the Government of India has been treading very cautiously while taking a position on Washington's unilateral military attacks on Iraq. New Delhi finally said on Thursday that the U.S. military action lacked "justification". India also concluded that since there was no agreement in the U.N. Security Council on what to do with Iraq, the efficacy of the U.N. system had been seriously impaired. There was no reference to the fact that it was the U.S. that did not put the second resolution to vote; it was the U.S. that had bypassed the U.N. system since it was uncertain about mustering a majority in the Security Council.

It has been a clear case of tightrope walking. Unlike China and Russia, India did not call for an end to what has now amounted to an American invasion of Iraq. Instead, the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, called for an early conclusion of military operations against Iraq. The Government seems to have missed the point about the popular and governmental opposition to the American war on Iraq. That it is about a principle — that no country, however powerful it might be, can decide to walk into another country.

Firm American allies such as France and Germany have taken a position on the war, but India, which is not even a temporary member of the U.N. Security Council, has found it hard to. At the Kuala Lumpur NAM summit in February, Mr. Vajpayee said the U.S. role on the Iraq issue was such that it could not be supported. But since then, the "distilling" of the Indian position (deliberate?) has been such that differing signals have been sent out. It has been stressed that Washington is not concerned about the position taken by New Delhi, but at the same time the U.S. leadership has been in constant telephonic contact with India. On another front, a Crisis Management Group (CMG) has been set up to monitor the fallout of the Iraq war on the large number of Indians living in the Gulf.

The price of fuel in the country has already risen; so has the cost of air travel. A long U.S. entanglement in Iraq (not necessarily in active military conflict) could have unintended consequences for countries such as India.

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