Rodney... where you been? Who are the Kashmir militants? Anyway... It's a GOOD POST! I particularly like this part: The EU-3 also assured India that IAEA director-general Mohamed El Baradei would continue to have the whiphand on the issue.
Posted on 10/04/2005 7:12:10 PM PDT by Rodney King
Washington, Sept. 25: New Delhi acquitted itself reasonably well in the first significant challenge to its global standing and diplomacy since the world acknowledged India as an emerging global power worthy of being in the big league in the 21st century.
The handling of the challenge — its vote on whether Iran’s nuclear programme should be referred to the UN Security Council — was all the more commendable because its outcome defied domestic political expediency.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh personally cleared the decision to vote with the US and the so-called EU-3, namely Germany, France and the UK, in favour of referring Iran at an unspecified date to the Security Council on suspicions of pursuing a programme to acquire nuclear weapons in the full knowledge that the vote would spark a furore among Left parties and to a lesser extent in the BJP.
In deciding to vote with the West and not abstaining along with Russia, China, Brazil and South Africa, what weighed with the Prime Minister was the absolute imperative for India to secure its interests in the Gulf and not the desire to protect the July 18, 2005, Indo-US nuclear agreement, according to diplomats engaged in the negotiations that led to the IAEA resolution yesterday.
Top-ranking Americans have told equally top-ranking Indians in recent weeks that the US has plans to invade Iran before Bush’s term ends. In 2002, a year before the US invaded Iraq, high-ranking Americans had similarly shared their definitive vision of a post-Saddam Iraq, making it clear that they would change the regime in Baghdad.
On the last day of his stay in New York this month, Singh made public his fears for the safety of nearly four million Indians in the Gulf in the event of diplomacy failing to persuade Iran away from a confrontation with the US and others on the nuclear issue.
Singh knows that whatever he has done on the economic front in the last year and a half as Prime Minister and much of what he did as finance minister in the 1990s will be under threat if the Gulf was plunged into another war.
In talks with leaders in the US, Russia and Europe, Singh has linked India’s energy security and its comfortable balance of payments to stability in the Gulf. That squarely put India against Iran acquiring nuclear weapons in violation of its own international commitment under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT).
In his conversation with Singh on Friday, Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, made it clear that Iran would no longer be bound by the IAEA’s “additional protocol” allowing its inspectors into the country if it was referred to the Security Council.
Such an action would have been only a few steps away from an Iranian withdrawal from the NPT itself, which would have created a grave international crisis. Through other channels, the Iranians also told India that they would start uranium enrichment from a second nuclear facility if the Security Council was brought into the issue.
In the light of these developments, foreign secretary Shyam Saran in New York and India’s permanent representative to the UN in Vienna, Sheel Kant Sharma, engaged in marathon talks with the Americans and Europeans right upto the actual vote last night to ensure that Iran was dealt with in the IAEA and not hauled before the Security Council immediately.
South Block’s recommendation that India should vote for the resolution was put before the Prime Minister after the EU-3 approached India in New York on Friday night.
French, German and British officials assured Saran then that India’s insistence on dealing with Iran in the IAEA — at least till the next meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors in November — had been accommodated. The EU-3 also assured India that IAEA director-general Mohamed El Baradei would continue to have the whiphand on the issue.
Iran is understood to have assured India privately after last night’s vote that it would resume negotiations with the IAEA. But in Tehran’s world of doublespeak, it is also expected to whip up popular sentiment by publicly railing against the IAEA resolution
India's home to some 140 mill mussies. A war with mussies will mean an eventual civil war within india that'll make the partition look like a walk in the park.
As an Indophile, I dont want that.
I read on FR earlier that Muslims hate Hindus even more than Christians or Jews. BTW, that post made me laugh. That would be pretty kool if they started a war with the muslim slime. A billion Indians versus a couple hundred million muslims? No contest...
Less than a billion Hindus versus more than a billion Moslems ~ keep the numbers straight here!
Here ya go, Hillary, you did want to be President, didn't you?
Are you sure that there are a billion mualims? I never heard their number that high
There's at least that many working at the airport in Minneapolis.
India is short a billion Hindus because they have, as another poster already noted, 140,000,000 Moslems themselves!
Maybe in the world, but of India's population (1.08 billion) about 80% are Hindu - 800,000,000 - and about 12% are Moslem - 120,000,000. The bulk of the Moslem population went to Pakistan upon partition.
Ah, ya beat me to it...
Although Santeria is for long been considered a continuation of West African shamanism, a good look at it's "gods" and "spirits" reveals mysterious equivalences to popular Hindu cults.
Best explanation for this was the arrival of Hindus in the Americas in the 1700s. As we all recall from our World History course in 8th grade, the Brits conquered India in the early 1700s and immediately began transporting cheap Indian labor worldwide to all of the new British colonies. They brought their religion with them. In several countries in the Americas descendants of Indian immigrants dominate culture and government!
"I do not think India would be reticent about taking advantage of the oil wealth of the Persian Gulf to finance her campaign to control all between Suez and Sumatra. This would relieve us of a burden, and would also make her more of a match for China which would also serve our interests."
As well as giving India some blackmail capability over China since they get oil from Iran which would fall under Indian control.
That in turn could spark a full-scale war between the two countries, with the positive benefit of seeing all of the mercantilist free trader investments go up in flames.
And they would all head to Uncle Sam for a bailout!
"And they would all head to Uncle Sam for a bailout!"
They would try, but with the resulting severe economic damage that the US would suffer due to it's stupidly excessive dependence upon both nations there wouldn't be enough money for it.
I'm sure they'd be willing to loan us the money to bail themselves out, as long as we paid interest on the money.
It is really sick to say it would be "nice" to start a war, maybe think about what you are saying please
You're right. It would be nice to win a war.
Rodney... where you been? Who are the Kashmir militants? Anyway... It's a GOOD POST! I particularly like this part: The EU-3 also assured India that IAEA director-general Mohamed El Baradei would continue to have the whiphand on the issue.
What exactly does 'India getting into war with Muslims' mean...???
India cannot and would not butcher her own 140 million muslims citizens...So what exactly would they do to get into a war with the Muslims... As it stands some 4 million Indian citizens are employed in the Gulf region and India make a lot of money from that region...What would India want to change that?
Even the Kashmir issue is highly localized...mostly limited to the Kashmir valley.....
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