NP Upadhyaya, Kathmandu: Navjot Singh Siddhu is the perfect person to handle India’s Foreign Ministry. Unfortunately, Siddhu belongs to the Congress party and he a minister in the Congress led provincial government in Punjab.
The modesty and sobriety that the former cricketer exhibited and the subtleness of diplomatic courtesy and the etiquette(s) he showed, August 18, 2018, in Islamabad was simply superb.
Words fail to describe his modest acts that he for all along his Pakistan stay exhibited in order not to break the diplomatic protocol that was demanded of him on such important occasions.
This he complied with while observing the inaugural ceremony of the newly elected Pakistan Prime Minister, Imran Khan, could simply be not put in words as words fail, we repeat, to delve on the details of the jovial mood that Siddhu, comparatively a man not from the diplomatic schooling, exhibited during the entire ceremony and handled the strained Indo-Pakistan ties with proper finesse and made strenuous efforts in his own way aimed at repairing the bilateral damage so that the two neighboring countries could live in peace for generations to come.
Siddhu made the efforts all he could in this regard.
He, in the process, even hugged Qamar Javed Bajwa, the CoAS of the Pakistan Army who is taken as one of the most powerful man in the entire nation.
Now it has come to light why Siddhu was taken to task inside India by the ruling Rafale scam tainted BJP, for talking peace with Islamabad and making gestures aimed at bringing in normalcy in the stressed bilateral ties.
Siddhu should have been in place of the most arrogant women in South Asia, Sushma Swaraj, who thinks taller than what she is.
She perhaps forgets at times her political and diplomatic height.
She is just the tail of Prime Minister Modi and she acts as Modi dictates her. She talks and speaks the recorded version of what Modi teaches her in private about the SAARC nations more so about Nepal and Pakistan.
The arrogant women is not just naughty but inauspicious as well to which Nepal has experienced several times in the past.
Her arrival after the quake in 2015 brought more misery to the already panicked people of this country. The Imposition of economic blockade was her personal idea to force Nepal to kneel down. She failed. Nepal as a nation-state has now China tilt though the political men possess India bend and land in Delhi quite often to get blessed.
Delhi is Nepal’s new capital since the great political change of 2005-6.
Under the misleading garb of Hindu religion, Sushma is cruel at heart and believes in inflicting pains to others, read the smaller countries neighboring the former British India Company.
But yet she prefers to challenge and confront China-the world power that it is already the one.
She left the SAARC Council of Ministers Chaired in New York by Nepal the other day, a sovereign and independent nation which never remained as slave in the past, perhaps to hint Pakistan that she was not at all happy with that country for having created troubles at the border which damaged the prospects of the talks that had been agreed upon by both the countries a day earlier to be held on the side lines of the UNGA, New York.
However, suddenly the Indian side cancelled the talks sine die citing some illogical reasons.
But yet when Nepal, the current Chair of the SAARC regional body invited the SAARC council of ministers for a meet in New York, the SAARC member states did take part in the meet but the arrogant Indian minister Sushma Swaraj suddenly preferred to boycott the SAARC meet citing some untenable flimsy reasons.
After Sushma Swaraj left the SAARC venue, the Bangladesh foreign Minister Mahhood Ali and the Afghan Foreign Minister too followed Sushma’s footsteps.
This is what the step by step news that we have kindly received from New York through the kind courtesy of our own friends based in the US. Here follows the news in details that speaks of the Indian dadagiri.
“Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj left a meeting of the SAARC foreign ministers early, which was attended by her Pakistani counterpart Shah Mehmood Qureshi amidst fresh chill in bilateral ties.
Swaraj attended the Informal Meeting of the SAARC Council of Ministers held here on the margins of the 73rd UN General Assembly which was chaired by Foreign Minister of Nepal Pradeep Kumar Gyawali on last Thursday.
After making her statement, she left the meeting early, prompting criticism from Pakistan Foreign Minister Qureshi who later told reporters, “no I didn’t have any talk with her (Swaraj). On the positive gesture, I can say she left the meeting mid-way, maybe she was not feeling well”.
Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has alleged that India’s domestic political and electoral compulsions were behind new Delhi’s reluctance to talk to the new Government in Islamabad”.
India, on the other hand, has maintained that there can be talks with Pakistan unless it stops supporting terrorists”. PTI, September 29, 2018.
In the meanwhile , Amit Sha the BJP leader has described the Bangladeshis as ‘termites’ and accused them of ‘infiltrating’ India.
Amit Sha is the BJP President who made an ‘unwanted’ remark, a senior minister of the Government of Bangladesh has recently said.
Speaking to The Hindu daily newspaper, Minister of Information Hasanul Haq Inu said Mr. Sha was not qualified to speak on India-Bangladesh relationship and that Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had assured Dhaka that people excluded from Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise would not be sent to Bangladesh.
In fact when the Indian side cancelled the talk on the UNGA sidelines, the Pakistani Prime Minister Khan had labeled India arrogant on last Saturday for cancelling what would have been the countries’ first high-level talks in years, decrying “small men occupying big offices” who opposed change.
Perhaps the notion of small men was directed towards PM Modi, but not sure.
The foreign ministry in New Delhi said its decision to scrap the meeting was to protest the killing of Indian security personnel in Kashmir and a Pakistani postage stamp it said was “glorifying” an anti-India separatist who Indian forces killed in the disputed Himalayan region last year.
Pakistan described India’s reasons as excuses to enable it to avoid holding talks before national elections next year.
When asked if he spoke to his Indian counterpart, Qureshi said Swaraj left in the middle of the SAARC meeting. He also said he paid careful attention to her statement and call for regional cooperation but how such an objective could be possible when India was acting as a barrier to said cooperation.
Talking to media persons, a completely baffled Pak foreign Minister said that “one country was holding the 1.7 billion people of South Asia hostage, while making vague statements and unsubstantiated, whimsical allegations”.
The SAARC summit has already been delayed by two years, with no end in sight,” said a different statement by the Pakistan Foreign Office (FO), report news agencies from New York.
The Indian Foreign Minister in doing so apparently insulted Nepal, the current chair of the SAARC and also the country which just chaired the BIMSTEC meet in Kathmandu, August 30, 31, 2018.
Sushma may have some grudge with the Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Muhammad Quresh but her quitting of the venue does speak also that Sushma disliked the Nepali stance in having dared to revive the regional body-the SAARC.
Nepal PM has already stated that BIMSTEC can’t be a substitute for the SAARC regional body.
Perhaps this statement has retarded the brains of the movers and shakers of the Indian establishment.
Now the question is that why Nepal under the instructions of the Indian leadership convened the BIMSTEC meet in Kathmandu and took the pains of inviting regional heads and paid for the security and their pleasure and comforts for all along the three to four days and in lieu India, the regional bully together with Bangladesh and Afghanistan summarily boycotted the SAARC meet chaired by Nepal’s foreign minister?
If Nepal is insulted the way it was in New York, what is the benefit in continuing with the membership of the SAARC and the BIMSTEC which were the victims of the regional bully-the Indian establishment?
Nepal should quit BIMSTEC or lobby for China and Pakistan to bring in these two countries in the Bay of Bengal Initiative in order to balance the power structure-the dadagiri of India.
Or leave the two regional bodies to die a premature death.
“Perhaps she was not feeling well and so she may have left the venue”, is what the Pakistan Foreign Minister said of Sushma’s childish acts which were evident to those who were still inside the SAARC meet hall in New York.
FM Qureshi hit the nail right on the head.
The big question now is: what if Nepal says NO to Modi’s November/December 2018, arrival in Nepal?
A tit for tat perhaps awaits PM Modi. But will Nepal take the courage to do so? Fear of yet another blockade? So what?
Nepal has the right to send negative signals suggesting PM Modi that his repeated arrival in Nepal bodes ill for the overall political health of Nepal. Should this be a message to PM Modi who is all set to land in Nepal this year end in order to perhaps destabilize the volatile political situation of Nepal’s Terai/Madhesh. His intentions are not that benevolent.
If Modi lands again in Nepal this year end, then the visit of the Chinese President Xi Jinping to Nepal remains a distant talk indeed. These are all Modi plans, it is presumed here. Nepal must prepare herself for a possible Modi wrath. So be it.
@telegraph
