Political India: Engaging America

From The Hindu

The United States has revoked the visa of the Venezuelan Ambassador to Washington, Bernardo Alvarez, in retaliation for Carcas’ refusal to accept the credentials of U.S. diplomat Larry Palmer as Ambassador to the Latin American nation.

Marking one of the sharpest exchanges of diplomatic barbs between the two countries since the U.S. President Barack Obama came into office, the State Department confirmed on Wednesday night that it had withdrawn the visa granted to Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez.

At a press briefing this week State Department spokesman Mark Toner had warned that while the U.S. regretted the Venezuelan government’s decision to withdraw “agrément,” or formal approval, for Ambassador Designate Palmer, the move “affects our ability to carry out normal diplomatic relations, and… there could be consequences for that action...”

The trouble began when Mr. Palmer, to the chagrin of the Chavez administration, made comments to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about low morale in the Venezuelan military and concerns regarding Colombian FARC rebels finding refuge on Venezuelan soil. In August Mr. Chavez announced that he would not be willing accept Mr. Palmer’s appointment.

On December 21 the Caracas U.S. embassy Chargé, Darnall Steuart, received a diplomatic note from Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro, which formally withdrew permission for Mr. Palmer to function as Ambassador to Venezuela.

Describing Mr. Palmer’s remarks about Venezuela as “blatantly disrespectful,” Mr. Chavez earlier said in a statement, “If the [U.S.] government is going to expel our Ambassador there, let them do it… If they are going to cut diplomatic relations, let them do it.”

The latest episode is the most high-level fracas since nine months of diplomatic stalemate that ended in June 2009. During that period both countries withdrew their Ambassadors over a disagreement about U.S. military bases in Colombia.

While tensions have existed between the U.S. and Venezuela for over a decade, the U.S. still heavily depends on Venezuelan oil, purchasing close to a million barrels of crude from Venezuela every day, according to some estimates.

Labels: U.S.-Venezuelan ties

From The Hindu

It began on Sunday morning as a gentle flurry: tiny white flakes dancing on a merry breeze. Apart from ominous-sounding forecasts of a snowstorm from meteorological offices in the greater New York area, there was no hint of menace, no inkling, that such a benign snowfall could metastasize into a savage blizzard that would bring vast swathes of the East Coast to its knees.

But to those watching its progress from Manhattan, New York, which was to become the very epicentre of the snow's fury, its sheer acceleration was an unmistakable sign of its potency. And sure enough by 10 a.m. local time the snow was already dropping down in sheets and the gusting wind had acquired a violent edge, whipping the snow against island's resolute skyscrapers.

From that point on the transformation was dramatic — by 6 p.m. the city was barely recognisable for the post-destructive air that it had acquired. With the snow piling rapidly on the dangerously slippery sidewalks, cars skidded about helplessly, wheels churning the powdery snow in futility.

The city's denizens wandered zombie-like in their hooded snow gear, desperately seeking refuge in the nearest warm cafe.

As visibility dropped to zero and the blizzard attained a gale-force magnitude by Sunday night, it became clear that New York City was but one of the worst affected areas along the United States' eastern seaboard. With Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina pre-emptively declaring states of emergency some of the blizzard's worst consequences were mitigated through sheer preparedness.

Yet by Monday morning, when the snow and wind had abated and New Yorkers were greeted with a crisp blue sky and a fairytale-white landscape, news of travel chaos was already pouring in. Thousands of air, rail and road passengers were stranded, many unable to return to their homes or work after leaving for the Christmas weekend.

With reports citing wind speeds of 128 kmh, literally thousands of flights had to be cancelled at major airports such as New York's JFK. Power outages crippled everything from Amtrak trains to ordinary households on one of the coldest nights of the year.

Media also reported that “hundreds of cold, hungry and tired air passengers” spent the night at various airports with only some provided blankets and cots and none having access to their checked baggage.

Other eastern states fared no better. In coastal Massachusetts seaside homes were said to have been flooded by storm-driven waves, some of them even catching fire. In New England commuters were reported to have stayed off the roads with most highways and normally busy city centres eerily empty. Despite warnings by Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia, conditions in the state were said to be “frustratingly bad across the region well into Monday”.

Along with Virginia, Maryland and Delaware were paralysed by train cancellations even as the storm was reported to have “meandered into the Northeast”.

While flights slowly resumed on Monday evening and Tuesday morning, there was little clarity when the backlog of cancelled flights and delayed trains would be cleared.

Even in New York — a city that has weathered all kinds of disasters — it was clear that this was one storm that would not be soon forgotten.

As one cabbie said to this correspondent, “I have been here 18 years and never once have I seen a storm this bad."

Labels: blizzard, John F. Kennedy airport, natural disaster, New York, snow, weather forecast

From The Hindu

A strident exchange of official statements between the United States and Russia has followed in the wake of the guilty verdict for Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russian businessman convicted of embezzling billions of dollars worth of oil money.

On Monday, Mr. Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev were found guilty of siphoning and then laundering money from their oil company Yukos. Shortly after the verdict was announced U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “Today's conviction in the second trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky... raises serious questions about selective prosecution — and about the rule of law being overshadowed by political considerations.”

Ms. Clinton said such cases had a negative impact on Russia's reputation for fulfilling its international human rights obligations and improving its investment climate. The U.S. would be monitoring the appeals process, she said.

The White House issued a statement saying it was “deeply concerned” at the conviction. In a strongly-worded reaction, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said, “We are troubled by the allegations of serious due process violations, and what appears to be an abusive use of the legal system for improper ends.”

According to reports Moscow however hit back at the critical reaction from the U.S. and other Western countries such as Germany, with the Russian Foreign Ministry posting a statement on its website saying, “Attempts to exert pressure on the court are unacceptable... We expect everyone to mind his own business, both at home and in the international arena.”

Mr. Gibbs also noted that U.S. President Barack Obama had spoken frequently with his Russian counterpart Dmitri Medvedev about the Khodorkovsky and other cases as part of their ongoing conversation about Mr. Medvedev's campaign to strengthen the rule of law and modernise Russia's political and economic system.

Echoing Ms. Clinton's words he added, that the White House would continue to monitor the next stages, “including the fairness of the sentences and the review by higher courts during the appeals process”.

Yet the Russian Foreign Ministry website reportedly contested U.S. allegations of “selective justice,” arguing that such assertions were, “groundless.”

Earlier, Chairman of Russia's Lower House of Parliament's Foreign Affairs committee Konstantin Kosachev dismissed concerns expressed by Mr. Khodorkovsky's lawyers that the verdict was the result of official pressure. He was quoted as saying, “I understand perfectly well that this is a very spectacular case and many questions may arise. But I have to respect the decision by the court, as a loyal citizen of Russia.”

As he awaits sentencing, Mr. Khodorkovsky is already serving out an eight-year prison sentence from a 2005 trial over fraud and tax evasion charges.

Labels: Khodorkovsky verdict, U.S.-Russia ties

From The Hindu

While economic growth in Asia, including India, has been strong in 2010, its sustainability in 2011 will require “policy tightening,” lesser reliance on export-led growth and an overall rebalancing that requires moving away from this year's stimulus policies, according to Anoop Singh, Director for the Asia-Pacific region at the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Speaking to a group of journalists at the Fund's headquarters here, Mr. Singh said that Asia “performed remarkably well in 2010,” and in part Asia's own growth was led by strong growth in China and India.

In particular, such growth had been spurred on, in the first half of 2010, by a rebound in global manufacturing, a rise in domestic demand and also “appropriate policy stimulus.” In the second-half of 2010, there was a “moderation of activity, but we have leaned towards a more sustainable pace,” Mr. Singh said.

He noted that the IMF expected growth in Asia to remain relatively strong and continue at a “fairly robust 7 per cent in 2011, which we see as a sustainable rate.”

However, Mr. Singh cautioned that despite this prospect, Asia remained subject to downside risks from the external environment, including the risk that global growth could be weaker than expected in advanced economies; and that there could be risks arising from the “financial spill-over” also from advanced economies to Asian banks, firms and sovereign debt.

In this context, two major policy challenges remained — the first relating to the exit of Asian economies from the policy stimulus, “which Asia has certainly enjoyed for the last year-and-a-half.” The second challenge pertained to capital inflows that the region faced along with other emerging markets “and this is partly because of the growth divergence relative to advance economies.”

In response to a question from The Hindu on why the Fund recommended policy tightening when there were still some possible downside risks to growth that could emerge from advanced economies, Mr. Singh said, “In the short run, Asia and India have clearly seen that the output gap is closing and inflationary pressures exist.”

He noted that for example, while core inflation had risen in India, the IMF expected that such inflation “should decline in the coming months [and] the government is quite sure that it should be down to 5.5 per cent in March.”

Further, he said, macroeconomic indicators have lags and in India monetary policy works with long lags. Thus the IMF estimated that “the peak effect of monetary policy in India, on inflation, probably takes five to six quarters. We see... in many parts of Asia, including India, that the real policy rates are low or negative, which is somewhat inconsistent with where the output gap is and where inflationary conditions are.” Hence the conditions were right for removing the macro stimulus, he added.

Mr. Singh said that overall, “We know that Asia is an economic powerhouse and it accounts for an increasing share of the world's growth. In large part due to the rapid growth in India and China over the last ten years, and this is expected to continue over the medium and longer term.”

He said that in order to maintain these high growth rates, the region would need to rebalance and would reduce its reliance on export-led growth. “Rebalancing will be the key to sustaining growth partly because the growth in advanced economies will remain sluggish... for some years,” he said.

Labels: Asian economy, International Monetary Fund

From The Hindu

When a Swiss Magistrate recommended bringing nuclear smuggling charges against Friedrich Tinner and his two sons Urs and Marco this week, he could have only guessed at the ripple effect that the case would have in two faraway countries – Pakistan and the United States.

The Tinners, who are Swiss nationals, allegedly ran the most notorious nuclear smuggling ring in history – the shadowy web of disgraced Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

While Khan, who was released from house arrest in early 2009 despite confessing to illicit nuclear sales, is well known for smuggling nuclear products to states such as North Korea and Libya, what is likely to cause a stir in the United States is the fact that the Swiss case frustrates a “seven-year effort by the Central Intelligence Agency” to keep their own relationship with the Tinners secret.

According to reports in the American media, the Bush administration officials admitted that the Tinners not only worked for Khan but also secretly served as double agents for the CIA. In their latter capacity, the New York Times reported, the Tinners gave the U.S. spy agency information about Khan’s activities and helped the agency “introduce flaws into the equipment” sold by Khan to other countries.

Magistrate Andreas Müller, who held a news conference in Bern on Thursday to announce the charges, attacked the Swiss government for having “massively interfered in the wheels of justice by destroying almost all the evidence.”

While Mr. Müller criticised the government for ordering federal criminal police not to cooperate with him, what was left unsaid was that alleged CIA break-ins in Switzerland, and an “unexplained decision by the agency not to seize electronic copies of a number of nuclear bomb designs found on the computers of the Tinner family,” might also be exposed during the course of the forthcoming investigation.

According to the NYT,investigators from several countries said that one such blueprint “came from an early Chinese atomic bomb; two more advanced designs were from Pakistan’s program.”

Commenting on the murky involvement of the CIA and Swiss authorities, Mr. Müller said, “There are many parts. It is like a puzzle and if you put the puzzle together you get the whole picture.”

The possibility of official charges against the Tinners came even as a new book, “Fallout,” is on the verge of being released – a book that was said to describe “previously unknown details of the CIA’s secret relationship with the Tinners, which appears to have started around 2000.”

The book reportedly tells how the CIA agents sent the Tinners “coded instructions, spied on their family, tried to buy their silence and ultimately had the Bush administration press Switzerland to destroy evidence in an effort to keep the Tinners from being indicted and testifying in open court.”

In particular it is reported to describe how the Bush administration “grew so alarmed at possible disclosures of CIA links to the family that in 2006 Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice lobbied Swiss officials to drop their investigation.”

Reports suggested that the next step would be for the Swiss Attorney General to decide whether to accept Mr. Müller's recommendations. The case continues.

Labels: A. Q. Khan, CIA, nuclear smuggling, Tinners smuggling

From The Hindu

With the United States Senate drumming up bipartisan support to pass the New START this week, some experts here are speculating that President Barack Obama's zeal for eliminating nuclear weapons might result in discussion on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which has languished for over a decade, being revived next year.

Although India has unilaterally declared a moratorium on testing, it has equally firmly refused to accede to the CTBT regime as long as other major nuclear powers, including the U.S., did not do so. The revival of prospects for the CTBT ratification in the U.S. could raise concerns in India, particularly if India feels that it is being subject to relatively more pressure than other nuclear powers to accede to the treaty.

While it is certainly too early to come to any firm conclusion on the prospects for the CTBT revival in 2011, some arms reduction specialists, such as Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association have argued that should the Obama administration decide to pursue a long and sustained campaign for the CTBT ratification, it would certainly be possible to cobble together bipartisan support base for it.

Speaking to The Hindu Mr. Kimball said that this was possible in part because much had changed since the debate surrounding the CTBT in 1998-99 and, for example, there was greater consensus now that the effectiveness of the U.S.' nuclear arsenal would not be compromised by any commitment by the U.S. to forswear testing.

He further noted significant comments hinting at the Obama administration's interest in reviving discussions on the CTBT, made before the United Nations First Committee on Disarmament and International Security by Rose Gottemoeller, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, in October, and by Brooke Anderson, Alternate Representative for Special Political Affairs, in September.

However there are some experts who regard the prospects for the CTBT revival as dimmer than what Mr. Kimball suggested. In comments to The Hindu Ashley Tellis, Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, rejected the idea that the passage of New START had any direct impact on the CTBT. He said, “It is going to be very hard to get the U.S. Senate to ratify the CTBT any time soon, especially in the new Congress.” He added that even if the U.S. were to ratify the CTBT, he did not see how India could sign it at this juncture.

Similarly Teresita Schaffer, a former U.S. Ambassador who writes about South Asia, said to The Hindu that while the Obama administration may be interested in reviving the CTBT “they know its chances are poor.” Arms control treaties have usually been overwhelmingly approved, she noted, and yet the “one time [that] the CTBT came before the Senate it did not even get a majority let alone the needed two-thirds [support needed for passage].

Yet Mr. Kimball argued that with the improvement in global testing monitoring technologies, the U.S. had much to gain from being able to verify suspicious incidents. Mr. Kimball said, “Today three-fourths of monitoring systems are certified and online, there have been numerous onsite inspections exercises conducted, and it has proven that it can detect extremely small explosions, such as the North Korean nuclear test.”

He also noted that the reason that the CTBT did not get adequate support in the late 1990s was because erstwhile Democratic President Bill Clinton faced a Republican-controlled Senate, and Republican Senator Jesse Helms, who was Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time “laid a trap for President Clinton,” – entailing few hearings on the subject and a hasty vote – which led to the treaty not being passed.

Considering the Obama administration's non-proliferation options in 2011, however, Mr. Tellis, said, “From a policy point of view, I think it is more important to sustain the current moratorium against testing worldwide rather than spend our energies on ratifying a treaty that has at best marginal impact on stemming further proliferation.”

Labels: Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, START arms reduction treaty

From The Hindu

The United States Senate on Wednesday handed President Barack Obama his second major bipartisan victory during its ongoing lame-duck session when it passed the New START treaty, an arms reduction agreement with Russia.

The treaty was passed by a majority of 71 Senators, with 26 Senators opposing it. The White House had all but given up on its passage under the 111th Congress, after key Republican Senator Jon Kyl refused to support it arguing the treaty was too complex to consider in the limited time available until Congress recessed for the holiday season at the end of December.

Speaking after the treaty was approved, Mr. Obama said: “I am glad that Democrats and Republicans came together to approve my top national security priority for this session of Congress.” He said the New START treaty was “the most significant arms control agreement in nearly two decades”, and it would make the U.S. safer and reduce its nuclear arsenals along with Russia.

He also highlighted the crucial monitoring and verification functions implied by the treaty, noting that with its passage U.S. inspectors would be back on the ground at Russian nuclear bases to implement the treaty's policy of “trust but verify”.

Mr. Obama also linked the treaty's passage to the U.S.' engagement with Iran, saying the New START would help advance the U.S.' relationship with Russia, which was essential to making progress “on a host of challenges — from enforcing strong sanctions on Iran to preventing nuclear weapons from falling into the hands of terrorists”.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also issued a statement in which she said once the treaty entered into force, the resumption of on-site inspections of Russia's strategic nuclear weapons facilities would provide the U.S. with an on-the-ground view of Russia's nuclear forces.

Ms. Clinton added that New START would make it possible for the U.S. and Russia to continue supporting the “reset” in their bilateral relationship and expanding cooperation on a wide range of issues. In a rare gesture she also thanked the former President, George H.W. Bush, and former Secretaries of State who added their support to the treaty.

The New START treaty was initially signed by Mr. Obama and Russian President Dimitri Medvedev in April this year. In it, both countries agreed to aggregate limits of 1,550 warheads; a combined limit of 800 deployed and non-deployed Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile launchers, Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile launchers, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments; and separate limit of 700 deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs, and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments.

The treaty also came with a verification regime that combined elements of the 1991 START Treaty with new elements tailored to the limitations of the Treaty. In this regard the White House had stated that measures under the new treaty included “on-site inspections and exhibitions, data exchanges and notifications related to strategic offensive arms and facilities covered by the Treaty.”

Labels: U.S.-Russia arms pact, U.S.-Russia relations

From The Hindu

The United States Senate took a historic step forward over the weekend as Congress passed a bill to repeal the controversial “Don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT) law, a ban on openly gay persons serving in the U.S. military.

In a statement following the repeal of DADT in the Senate, which voted 65 for versus 31 against the bill, President Barack Obama said, “As Commander-in-Chief, I am also absolutely convinced that making this change will only underscore the professionalism of our troops as the best led and best trained fighting force the world has ever known. ”

While the U.S. House of Representatives had already passed the repeal as an attachment to a Pentagon spending bill earlier this year, this weekend Senate Democrats passed the bill with the help of eight Republicans Senators who crossed the floor.

The passage of the repeal represents both a narrow escape as well as a major victory for Democrats and Mr. Obama. With the 112th Republican-dominated U.S. Congress set to convene in January, the failure to pass the repeal before the end of December would have risked killing off its prospects altogether. Yet the fact that it succeeded will strengthen the hand of Mr. Obama and Democrats who had made it a top policy priority earlier this year.

In particular observers noted that the repeal of DADT would help partially rectify the damage caused to the White House’s liberal support base, which has been stung by the President’s deal with Republicans, earlier this month, to extend tax cuts for the wealthy.

While the repeal’s passage was strongly supported by the military’s top brass, including Defence Secretary Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike Mullen, and an overwhelming majority of service members surveyed by the Pentagon, Mr. Obama said that he recognised that it was important to “responsibly transition to a new policy while ensuring our military strength and readiness.”

Commenting on the passage of the repeal Mr. Gates said, “Once this legislation is signed into law by the President, the Department of Defence will immediately proceed with the planning necessary to carry out this change carefully and methodically, but purposefully.”

He cautioned that it was important that defence personnel understood that while the military’s policy would change following the vote, its implementation and certification process would take place gradually, during which time the current law and policy would remain in effect.

Earlier this year both Mr. Obama as well as Mr. Gates criticised a decision passed by Virginia Phillips, a California federal judge, who ruled that DADT militated against the First Amendment rights of armed service officers and the military should therefore to stop enforcing the law. Subsequently the U.S. Supreme Court stayed Judge Phillips’ order, following a request by the U.S. Justice Department.

The Obama administration has consistently said that it preferred a Congressional repeal of the law to any court-mandated order to that effect, particularly as the former approach would provide the necessary procedural manoeuvrability required to implement the repeal.

The DADT law, which was introduced in 1993 as a compromise to allow gay persons to serve in the military, has reportedly led to over 12,500 members of the armed forces being discharged. In November an official survey found that more than two-thirds of the armed forces in the U.S. “do not object to gays and lesbians serving openly in uniform.”

Labels: Barack Obama, gay ban, military service, U.S. President

From The Hindu

The Islamabad station chief of the Central Intelligence Agency hastily departed from Pakistan on Thursday after his cover was blown through a suspected deliberate leak by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence.

Jonathan Banks was identified as the head of the CIA’s Pakistan office, in a lawsuit filed against the United States’ secretive spy agency by a resident of North Waziristan. The resident, Kareem Khan, was said to have filed the case against the CIA and Mr. Banks for their role in organising drone strikes that killed his son and brother.

The legal case brought by Mr. Khan called for murder charges to be brought against Mr. Banks and the CIA, and also reportedly said they should be executed for their crimes. Mr. Khan’s lawyer was quoted by the Guardian saying he had obtained Mr. Banks’ name from Pakistani journalists.

While Pakistan was quick to deny any involvement in leaking Mr. Banks’ name, U.S. officials were quoted as saying that since he had been identified publicly Mr. Banks “had received a number of death threats,” and they “strongly suspected” that the ISI had a hand in the leak.

CIA operatives’ identities are usually classified information given the risks associated with the covert operations that they are often engaged in. Leaks of their names have occurred occasionally, as in the 2003 case of Valerie Plame, a CIA agent who resigned after officials in the Bush administration exposed her identity to the American media.

Intelligence officers here were also quoted by the New York Times as saying that the leak may have been in retaliation for a civil lawsuit filed in New York City last month implicating the ISI chief Ahmad Shuja Pasha in the Mumbai terror attacks of November 2008.

The incident laid bare the deep and growing mistrust between the U.S. and Pakistani spy agencies even as U.S. President Barack Obama made a speech this week in which he warned that “terrorist safe havens within their borders must be dealt with.”

This week, the White House also released a progress review for the U.S.’ Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy, a report that sharply focused on the need for greater Pakistani cooperation in eliminating terrorist safe havens in the tribal border areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Following Mr. Obama's speech there were reports of CIA-supported drone attacks that were said to have killed 54 suspected militants in Khyber Agency located in the border area. While drone strikes have enjoyed tacit support from the Pakistani government, they are a source of widespread resentment in the broader public.

Labels: CIA, ISI, secret services

From The Hindu

Congress leader Sonia Gandhi “never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity to show real leadership,” officials at the United States embassy in New Delhi wrote on November 6, 2007, referring to tumultuous discussions and negotiations that led to the Parliamentary debate on the U.S.-India nuclear cooperation agreement.

The officials' critical view of Ms. Gandhi was revealed in a private diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website. In the cable, U.S. officials suggest that the Congress leadership had concerns about the Gujarat Assembly elections in mid-December of that year.

They argued that if the party managed to put in a solid performance in the State, an Opposition stronghold, it might feel strong enough to challenge the Left parties by moving forward with the International Atomic Energy Agency on the safeguards agreement at the risk of early mid-term polls.

The cable in question also had harsh words for Prakash Karat, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), for his party's resistance to some aspects of the nuclear agreement.

U.S. officials said, “With the future of Indian foreign credibility hanging in the balance, Sonia Gandhi has been unable to show principled leadership even when it might benefit her party at the polls and reveal Prakash Karat to be the extortionist that he is.”

Describing Ms. Gandhi and the Congress Party as “cautious and nervous,” the cables compared her to Golda Meir, the so-called “Iron Lady” of Israeli politics, saying that Ms. Meir “would be disgusted” at Ms. Gandhi's approach to the nuclear debate.

However, officials at New Delhi embassy assured Washington that they would step up their efforts to lobby for the deal behind closed doors. They said in the cable, “While remaining publicly restrained and taking care not to be seen as interfering with domestic Indian politics, the Embassy will continue to meet with all political, business and civil society organisations to urge them to support the agreement.”

They added that they would continue to press the United Progressive Alliance government on the need for early completion of the safeguards agreement with the IAEA and would also remind the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party that the U.S.-India civil nuclear pact was “their deal, too.”

Labels: India-U.S., nuclear deal, Sonia Gandhi, U.S. embassy leak, Wikileaks

From The Hindu

The Indian government was pressing forward with a host of development related investments in Afghanistan despite a sense of deep concern surrounding potential attacks upon its staff by militant groups and blockades of transit agreements by Pakistan, the United States embassy in New Delhi noted in diplomatic cables sent to Washington during 2009 and 2010.

The cables, released this week by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, observed that from India’s assistance programme for small, community-based projects, to its deployment of “low-cost” engineers for infrastructure development projects and training courses for Afghans in Indian institutions, New Delhi was not flagging in its efforts to help the Hamid Karzai government.

In particular, U.S. officials observed that since 2002 India contributed “over USD 1.2 billion in reconstruction assistance,” putting it among the top ranks of Afghan donors.

However Indian officials expressed growing concern with the security situation in Afghanistan, U.S. diplomats wrote, and “they have been increasingly critical of what they perceive as the Pakistani government's inability or unwillingness to act in the border tribal belt.”

They went on to note that Indian aid to Afghanistan was tempered by “Pakistani intransigence,” which questioned India’s motives and does not allow for much cheaper overland transit of goods, personnel or equipment.

The cables also suggested that the U.S. supported India’s role in Afghanistan, in fact arguing that a further expansion of that role to include areas such as force protection would require U.S. efforts to help overcome Pakistani objections.

The U.S. embassy in New Delhi conceded that India’s contribution to Afghanistan already did involve “limited military aid,” even if India remained “cognizant of U.S. government sensitivities about such assistance.”

Yet regarding Pakistan’s objections the cables said “GOI is mindful of Pakistani sensitivities on security-related assistance in Afghanistan, but this may be under review in the post-Mumbai environment.”

Among the more innovative suggestions for India’s contribution to Afghanistan’s development the U.S. officials put forth was an idea relating to Bollywood: “We understand Bollywood movies are wildly popular in Afghanistan, so willing Indian celebrities could be asked to travel to Afghanistan to help bring attention to social issues there,” U.S. diplomats wrote.

Labels: Afghan reconstruction, Indian aid, Wikileaks

From The Hindu

The United States viewed India as a “true partner” even if the Manmohan Singh government’s “capabilities are not without limits,” according to dispatches sent by the U.S. Ambassador to India, Timothy Roemer, on the eve of a visit to India by Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts in February this year.

In the latest tranche of private U.S. embassy cables published by Wikileaks, the whistleblower website, a briefing to Senator Kerry from the New Delhi U.S. embassy touched upon numerous areas of friction between the U.S. and India, including barriers to trade in agriculture, unresolved implementation measures in the U.S.-India civilian nuclear agreement and India’s strategic insecurities relating to the U.S.’s plans to eventually withdraw troops from Afghanistan.

However the report predominantly reflected the positive pitch of U.S.-India ties in 2010, following the Indian Prime Minister’s visit to Washington in November of the previous year.

In particular the cable dated February 11, 2010 expressed strong optimism on growing trade and economic cooperation as well as burgeoning defence sales. In the cable, Mr. Roemer also underscored the paradigm shift in India’s thinking on climate change negotiations, where, following the 16th Conference of Parties (COP-16) at Copenhagen in 2009, “India is beginning to understand it must address the climate issue not as a poor developing nation but rather as the major economy it has become.”

The cable however expressed concern at some dimensions of India’s internal politics, specifically questions surrounding what it labelled the 2009 “Sharm al Sheikh Joint Statement fiasco,” following which “heavyweights in the Congress, including Finance Minister Mukherjee [might] seize on any missteps to argue against a policy that reaches out to the Pakistanis.”

The New Delhi embassy also urged Senator Kerry to endorse India’s defence purchases from the U.S. during his visit, pressing home the fact that such sales were “growing quickly from roughly one billion USD in 2008, to over two billion so far this year.” Mr. Roemer added that there was good potential for over four billion U.S. dollars in sales in 2011, especially with the recent Indian Ministry of Defence approval to pursue the C-17 aircraft deal.

The most negative comment in the cable pertained to trade in the agriculture sector. In this regard the cable said that the U.S. continued to have concerns, especially after a Senate Finance Committee Report on Indian agricultural trade barriers highlighted the “essentially defensive agricultural trade policy long promoted by the Indian government.”

The U.S. was particularly interested in gaining marketing access for dairy products which were “blocked due to a series of non-scientific GOI rules,” the cable complained.

Labels: cablegate, Wikileaks, WikiLeaks India

From The Hindu

The Oklahoma State Penitentiary has used a veterinary anaesthetic drug called pentobarbital, more commonly used to put down dogs, to execute John Duty (58), a prisoner on death row.

In a development that is likely to fuel the ongoing arguments on whether the lethal injection method of execution constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment,” the state used the animal drug in place of sodium thiopental, one of the three chemicals injected as part of the procedure.

Duty was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m. eastern standard time according to Jerry Massie, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. He had been sentenced to death for strangling his cellmate, Curtis Wise, back in 2001.

Earlier this year the sole manufacturer of sodium thiopental in the United States, a company called Hospira, ran out of stock and said that it did not expect to resume production until 2011.

Last month Oklahoma state lawyers petitioned U.S. courts for use of the veterinary euthanasia drug in place of sodium thiopental, describing it as “an ideal anaesthetic agent for humane euthanasia in animals,” and not substantially different to sodium thiopental, according to reports. On November 19, Oklahoma federal judge Stephen Friot authorised the state’s use of the drug.

However numerous capital punishment specialists were reported to have warned that pentobarbital “had not been properly vetted and might not keep inmates unconscious during the more painful subsequent injections that kill them.”

In particular Duty’s lawyers had argued that that he would be used as a “guinea pig” in an experiment with the animal anaesthetic. While the anaesthetic is administered first, to cause unconsciousness, pancuronium bromide is then administered to induce paralysis, and finally potassium chloride is injected to stop the heart from beating.

In a different case, the Guardian newspaper reported, post-mortem examinations of three recent executions in Tennessee showed that there was “insufficient anaesthetic in the prisoner’s bloodstream: he was not rendered unconscious.” The newspaper said that in those cases the inmates did not die painlessly but “slowly suffocated as the other drugs took effect, an excruciating death.”

This year the debate surrounding the shortage of sodium thiopental spilled over international borders as well, with the United Kingdom coming in for a barrage of criticism from death penalty abolitionists in Europe, for exporting sodium thiopental to authorities in Arizona, who subsequently used them to execute another inmate, Jeffrey Landrigan.

Labels: capital punishment, death sentence, human rights abuse

From The Hindu

The Justice Department of the United States government has announced that it has slapped BP and several other companies it held responsible for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill last summer with a lawsuit seeking “unlimited removal costs and damages” under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990.

Speaking at a news conference following the announcement Attorney General Eric Holder said “We intend to prove that... violations [of industry regulations] caused or contributed to this massive oil spill, and that the defendants are therefore responsible – under the Oil Pollution Act – for government removal costs, economic losses, and environmental damages.”

Mr. Holder also warned that the Obama administration would not hesitate to take “whatever steps are necessary” to hold accountable those who are responsible for this spill, a remark that led some experts such as law professor David Uhlmann of the University of Michigan to speculate in the New York Times whether a criminal case might follow.

Currently it is only a civil suit that the U.S. government has filed, one that was built on the case that BP and companies related to the oil spill incident ought to be held liable for allowing over millions of gallons of crude oil to flow in the Gulf from the ruptured Macondo well of the Deepwater Horizon rig.

Other companies named as defendants in the suit include Anadarko Exploration and Production, Moex Offshore, Triton Asset Leasing, Transocean Holdings, QBE Underwriting and Lloyd’s Syndicate 1036. Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank in April this year, and was only capped in July after an unprecedented effort by BP and the government to halt the oil flow.

One notable absentee from the defendants list, however, was Halliburton, which was said to be the contractor for the cement work on the well. When asked about this Mr. Holder was reported to have explained that the complaint could be amended later and more defendant names could be added to the list. The wording of the lawsuit corroborated this claim.

Touching upon the vast scale of the damage resulting from the spill the lawsuit observed, “While the full scope and impact of this disaster are not yet known, the consequences include lost lives, destroyed livelihoods, and grave harm to natural resources across several States and related waters.”

The specific charges brought by the lawsuit against the operators of the well and the rig related to failure to prevent the blowout of oil and methane gas was not prevented by defendants, and the companies involved had not taken “necessary precautions to keep the Macondo Well under control.”

Other charges that the U.S. government has brought against the defendants include failing to use the best available and safest drilling technology to monitor and evaluate the Macondo Well’s conditions, failure to maintain continuous surveillance on the rig floor, and failure to maintain equipment and materials such as the Blow-Out Preventer stack, that were “available and necessary to ensure the safety and protection of personnel, equipment natural resources, and the environment.

Labels: environmental catastrophe, Gulf of Mexico, Obama administration, oil spill

From The Hindu

In the first Presidentially-mandated annual review of its strategy and progress in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, the United States hinted several times that greater cooperation with Pakistan was necessary in the tribal belt located on the Af-Pak border, if extremist safe havens were to be denied.

On Wednesday evening the White House released a short summary of the classified report, which argued that while the momentum achieved by the Taliban in recent years had been arrested in much of Afghanistan and reversed in some key areas, such gains would remained “fragile and reversible,” unless the U.S. made “more progress with Pakistan to eliminate sanctuaries for violent extremist networks.”

The report, which drew upon a wide range of inputs across the Obama administration, also worried that the presence of nuclear weapons and fissile materials in the region highlighted the importance of “working with regional partners to prevent extremists, including core al-Qaeda, from acquiring such weapons or materials.”

Despite the fragility of the gains made in the region, the report said, the administration reaffirmed President Barack Obama’s commitment to proceed with the troop drawdown starting in July 2011 and continuing until the transition from International Security Assistance Forces to Afghan National Security Forces was complete by the end of 2014. This plan was consistent with the agreement reached at the recent NATO Lisbon Summit, the report noted.

Dedicating an entire section to the U.S.-Pakistan relationship the review report described progress in the bilateral relationship as “substantial, but also uneven.” Specifically the report said that there was a need for “adjustment” in terms of cooperation with Pakistan in the denial of extremist safe havens. There was no mention of India in the five-page summary released by the White House.

The report also emphasised non-military aspects of its regional strategy, noting that “the denial of extremist safe havens cannot be achieved through military means alone, but must continue to be advanced by effective development strategies.”

The Af-Pak review report also drew attention to the continued challenge that al-Qaeda posed to U.S. interests – here too underscoring that the epicentre of that threat lay within Pakistan. “We remain relentlessly focused on Pakistan-based al-Qaeda because of the strategic nature of the threat posed by its leadership,” the report argued, adding that the U.S. remained committed to “deepening... our partnerships with Pakistan and Afghanistan in a way that brings us closer to the defeat of al-Qaeda.”

While the report left little doubt that the planned troop drawdown would proceed in July 2011, it noted that any such action would be “conditions-based,” and in particular would depend on the “major challenge” for the Afghan government to show it had the capacity to consolidate gains in geographic areas that had been cleared by ISAF and ANSF.

The study also said that American diplomacy in the region would support to “Afghan-led reconciliation” as a key enabling condition for peace and stability in Afghanistan, a process that Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai has favoured.

Labels: Afghan war review, Al-Qaeda, Taliban, US troops withdrawal

From The Hindu

Richard Holbrooke, President Barack Obama’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, died on Monday evening here at George Washington University Hospital after undergoing two surgical procedures aimed at repairing a tear in his aorta. He was 69 years old.

Expressing grief at his passing Mr. Obama said, “Michelle and I are deeply saddened by the passing of Richard Holbrooke, a true giant of American foreign policy who has made America stronger, safer, and more respected.” Along with Mr. Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton extended her condolences to Mr. Holbrooke’s wife, Kati Marton and his family, describing him as a “true statesman.”

Other senior administration officials, including Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. Representative to the United Nations, Susan Rice, and Defence Secretary Robert Gates, issued statements of condolence too. Sympathy also poured in from the region of Mr. Holbrooke’s work, with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari calling Ms. Marton to express condolences. In particular Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi recalled that Mr. Holbrooke “played an important role in upgrading the Pakistan-U.S. Strategic Dialogue to the Ministerial level and expanding the scope of Pakistan-U.S. relations.”

Mr. Holbrooke’s career both began and ended in the service of American diplomacy trapped within the perimeter of unrelenting wars of occupation. As a young Foreign Service officer he was assigned to the U.S. embassy in Vietnam in 1962, where he served for six years and made important policy contributions for economic development and local political reform. In this posting he was most remembered, however, for lending his expertise to the Paris peace talks of 1968, which ultimately helped end the war.

Twenty-four years later – following successful stints as the Director of the U.S. Peace Corps in Morocco (1970-72), as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs under President Jimmy Carter (1977-81) and as U.S. Ambassador to Germany (1993-94) – Mr. Holbrooke again found himself shaping the course of historically significant events.

In 1994, when Mr. Holbrooke took on the mantle of Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs, he headed the negotiation team that was responsible for resolving the Balkan crisis. For the seminal role he played as chief architect of the Dayton Peace Accords, in 1996 Mr. Holbrooke was awarded the Manfred Wörner Medal by the German Ministry of Defence for public figures rendering “special meritorious service to peace and freedom in Europe.”

Touted as a potential future candidate for the position of Secretary of State, Mr. Holbrooke was however sometimes caught out making gaffes including a statement he made earlier this year underplaying the fact that Indians had been targeted and killed in an attack in Kabul. The coordinated suicide attack of February 26 killed nine Indians in a building regularly used by Indian embassy and by Indians engaged in development work in Afghanistan.

Speaking to The Hindu Teresita Schaffer, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and a South Asia specialist who knew Mr. Holbrooke well said he was “extraordinarily gifted, insisted on control over all aspects of the foreign policy machinery, [was] a bureaucratic bulldozer, [and] alternately charming and abrasive.” Mr. Holbrooke was in fact nicknamed “the bulldozer,” and was quoted in media as saying that he had no qualms about “negotiating with people who do immoral things,” if it served efforts for peace.

Touching on his most recent role, Ms. Schaffer however said that Mr. Holbrooke recognised that Afghanistan was a tougher assignment, “in part because there were so many players, you couldn't put [the parties involved] in a room and force a solution.” This view was also corroborated by Lisa Curtis, Senior Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation think tank and a South Asia specialist who has served with the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department.

Ms. Curtis said to The Hindu that even Mr. Holbrooke, who brought to bear some of the best diplomatic and negotiating skills that existed in the U.S. government, “was unable to get Pakistan on board to deal with Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan.” She added that along with the challenge of securing Pakistani cooperation, the biggest task facing any successor to Mr. Holbrooke would be to “figure out how to work in coordination with the [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai government rather than at cross-purposes.”

On the vacuum left by Mr. Holbrooke’s death, Ms. Schaffer noted that “Whoever succeeds him will probably not have the same larger-than-life quality, and won’t be able to control how funds get allocated, to micromanage what people get assigned to Afghanistan and Pakistan, in short to dominate U.S. civilian tools being used in those countries.”

Ms. Curtis said it would be important, at the very least, to appoint a successor who had significant regional experience, and potential candidates could include Frank Ruggiero, Mr. Holbrooke’s deputy, Richard Armitage, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Haass, former U.S. coordinator for policy toward the future of Afghanistan, or Bruce Riedel, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Near East and South Asian Affairs.

The question of successors notwithstanding, the Obama administration has clearly lost a powerful personality who championed its cause, something that Vice President Joe Biden doubtless recognised when he quoted a mutual friend as saying, “If you’re not on the team and you’re in his way, God help you.”

Labels: death, Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan

From The Hindu

Richard Holbrooke, United States Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, remained in a critical condition on Sunday evening, the State Department said.

Mr. Holbrooke was admitted to George Washington University Hospital after collapsing during an official function on Friday. Earlier during the weekend State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said that doctors had completed surgery to repair a tear in Mr. Holbrooke’s aorta.

President Barack Obama expressed concern for Mr. Holbrooke too, saying in a statement that he had spoken to Mr. Holbrooke’s wife Kati Marton and told her that he and the First Lady were praying for Mr. Holbrooke.

Mr. Obama said, “Richard Holbrooke is a towering figure in American foreign policy, a critical member of my Afghanistan and Pakistan team, and a tireless public servant who has won the admiration of the American people and people around the world.”

He added that senior officials in his administration, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen and National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, had visited Mr. Holbrooke at the hospital.

On Sunday Mr. Holbrooke was said to have undergone an additional procedure to improve his circulation following the first surgical procedure.

In addition to Mr. Obama Ms. Marton received calls from Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari.

Labels: critical, Richard Holbrooke, U.S. Special Envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan

From The Hindu

Richard Holbrooke, United States Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, was said to be in critical condition on Saturday after he collapsed the day before during an official function.

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in a message that on Saturday doctors at George Washington University Hospital had completed surgery to repair a tear in Mr. Holbrooke’s aorta. However he remained critical, and “had been joined by his family,” Mr. Crowley said.

Labels: AfPak special envoy, Richard Holbrooke

From The Hindu

Unites States embassy officials in New Delhi described as “crass political opportunism” the statements made by senior Congress party leaders such as Digvijay Singh and A.R. Antulay, in the immediate aftermath of the Mumbai terror attacks of November 2008.

The comments were revealed this week by WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website, which is publishing thousands of private diplomatic cables that it obtained from the U.S. State Department.

The cable in question, which contained a candid and sharply critical review of Congress party politics following the Mumbai attacks, was authored by the U.S. embassy on December 23, 2008 and sent to the Secretary of State in Washington.

In the cable, U.S. officials said that the willingness of Congress leaders to support “outrageous” comments by erstwhile Minority Affairs Minister Mr. Antulay, propounding a conspiracy theory behind the killing of Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad Chief Hemant Karkare, reflected a cynical political calculation by the party that proved once again that many party leaders were “still wedded to the old identity politics.”

The context of the U.S. diplomats’ criticism was that Mr. Antulay sparked controversy on December 17 with comments insinuating that the killing of Mr. Karkare by the Mumbai terrorists was somehow linked to Mr. Karkare’s investigation of “Hindu terrorists” in the September 2008 Malegaon blasts case.

In that case authorities had arrested eleven Hindus, including an Indian Army Lieutenant Colonel, of whom police had identified five as having ties to the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and two others as having ties to Sangh Parivar organisations.

Following Mr. Karkare’s killing, which U.S. officials termed a “remarkable coincidence,” the cable noted that Mr. Antulay had fanned the flames of controversy when he said, “Superficially speaking they had no reason to kill Karkare. Whether he was a victim of terrorism or terrorism plus something, I do not know.”

The cable further quoted Mr. Antulay as saying, “Unfortunately his end came. It may be a separate inquiry how his end came... There is more than what meets the eyes.”

While U.S. officials praised some segments of Congress leadership, including Home Minister P. Chidambaram, for officially dismissing Mr. Antulay’s comments and distancing the party from them, they attacked Mr. Digvijay Singh’s comments on December 21, when he said, “I don’t think Antulay made a mistake. What he asked for is a probe. What is objectionable in his statement?”

The U.S. embassy noted that the BJP had reacted to Mr. Singh’s statements by shouting slogans, and staging a walkout in Parliament three days in a row, and demanding a formal clarification from the government.

Further U.S. officials noted that emboldened by the equivocation, Mr. Antulay had refused to apologise or retract his statements and instead went on to argue that they reflected the views of a large segment of the Muslim population.

Overall, the U.S. diplomats said, while cooler heads eventually prevailed within the Congress leadership, it chose to pander to Muslims’ fears and the episode demonstrated that the party would readily stoop to the old caste (and) religious-based politics.

Labels: Cong. controversy, Digvijay remarks, Karkare killing Antulay remarks, Wikileaks

From The Hindu

United States President Barack Obama must be thinking to himself that he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't — and he's probably right, at least so far as the latest controversy surrounding the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts is concerned.

This week, the President was roundly criticised by the liberal section of his party for striking a deal with Republicans, under which tax cuts enacted by the former President, George W. Bush, and set to expire on December 31 2010, would be extended across the board for two more years.

While the Senate tax proposal, whose price tag is estimated to be a whopping $858 billion over the next 10 years, is firmly supported by Republicans for allowing the cuts to remain for the richest Americans, it has come under fire from Democrats in the House of Representatives for the same reason.

The chagrin of House Democrats became obvious on Thursday evening when, in a behind-closed-doors vote, they called for the package to not be brought to a floor vote “without changes scaling back tax breaks for the rich”.

Republicans are also keen on the bill's proposal to lighten the tax burden on the estates of the wealthy. The Obama compromise includes a plan to raise the estate tax floor from $3.5 million to $5 million. Yet the alternative, to allow the tax cuts to expire and face Republican blockades against the bill's proposals to extend unemployment insurance and similar benefits for the middle class, might well have been political suicide for all concerned.

Mr. Obama on Friday argued that “Nobody — Democrat or Republican — wants to see people's pay-cheques smaller on January 1 because Congress did not act.”

Yet he appeared to hold out hope that his solution would make it through Congress.

He said, “I think that the framework that we have put forward, which says not only that people's taxes do not go up on January 1, but also that we extend unemployment insurance for a year, that we make sure that key provisions like the college tax credit, the child tax credit, the earned-income tax credit are included.”

That aspect of the framework would serve as the basis for compromise, he said ; and he was optimistic about how this compromise would ultimately be perceived: “At the end of the day, people are going to conclude we do not want 2 million people suddenly without unemployment insurance and not able to pay their rent, not able to pay their mortgage,” he said.

Labels: House Democrats, Republicans, tax cuts, U.S. President Barack Obama

From The Hindu

The repeal of “Don't Ask, Don't Tell,” the law banning gays from serving openly in the United States military, suffered a setback in the Senate on Thursday as it failed to clear a procedural vote and move closer to being passed into law.

A clutch of Democrats, along with a few Republicans and independents, could muster only 57 votes, three shy of a filibuster-proof majority needed to move the repeal forward.

Speaking after the vote, President Barack Obama said, “I am extremely disappointed that yet another filibuster has prevented the Senate from moving forward with the National Defence Authorisation Act.” He said though the “discriminatory” law's repeal enjoyed bipartisan support, a minority of Senators were standing in the way of this.

Mr. Obama in particular made reference to a recent official survey of armed forces families, which found that more than two-thirds of the armed forces in the U.S. do not object to gays and lesbians serving openly in uniform.

Security

He said a great majority of the American people agreed that the law “weakens our national security, diminishes our military readiness, and violates fundamental American principles of fairness, integrity and equality”.

Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who has been in favour of repealing “Don't Ask, Don't Tell,” said he was “disappointed in the Senate vote, but not surprised.” He had not been optimistic, he added.

Labels: gay ban, United States military

From The Hindu

An official of the Indian embassy in Washington confirmed to The Hindu that Indian Ambassador to the United States, Meera Shankar, was subjected to a “pat down” at Jackson-Evers International Airport in Mississippi and that “in all likelihood she was singled out because she was in a sari.”

Following External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna’s description of the episode as “unacceptable,” the embassy official here further confirmed that the matter was being taken up with the State Department. A State Department official did not immediately respond to a request for comments.

According to reports Ms. Shankar, who was returning to Washington from an event at Mississippi State University was about to board a flight to Baltimore when she was taken to a waiting room “despite staff being told that she was an ambassador.”

She was then reported to have been pulled from an airport security line and put through a hands-on frisking by a female Transportation Security Administration agent.

Reports also said the organisers of the event that Ms. Shankar had attended expressed dismay at the episode. Janos Radvanyi, Chair of the University’s International Studies Department was quoted as saying, “It was a wonderful programme, maybe the best we have had, (but) this stupid incident ruined the whole thing.”

He added, “She said, ‘I will never come back here.’ We are sending her a letter of apology,” noting also that Ms. Shankar was “very upset,” and that the incident would be “very bad for Mississippi.”

USA Today quoted Tan Tsai, a research associate at MSU who was at the scene, saying, “She is a very strong woman, but you could see in her face that she was humiliated... Indian culture is very modest.”

The newspaper further wrote that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour’s office was looking into the incident, with the Governor’s spokesman Dan Turner saying, “At this time, we are trying to find out exactly what happened – all of the details. He added that until the office has done a complete review, it would be inappropriate to comment on what action may be taken.

As per recent guidelines for security screening at airports, which have also been engulfed in controversy relating to the use of full-body scanners, there is said to be no express exemption for foreign diplomats; however they “allow for discretion on the part of TSA officers.”

Regarding “pat downs” the TSA website notes, “In order to ensure security, this inspection may include sensitive areas of the body... You may request that your pat-down inspection be conducted in private.”

Labels: airport security, ambassador pat down, Meera Shankar

From The Hindu

In an eleventh-hour compromise, United States President Barack Obama struck a deal with his entrenched Republican opposition to extend Bush-era tax cuts for another two years.

The cuts, introduced in 2001 by the former President, George W. Bush, were set to expire on December 31 since Congress was forbidden from making them permanent under rules at the time. The situation saw both the White House and the opposition digging in their heels as the deadline approached.

President Barack Obama had initially hoped to preserve the tax cuts for middle-class Americans while allowing the benefit to lapse for the richest two per cent — a distinction that Republicans sought to block.

Under the bargain struck this week, Mr. Obama will have his way at least on one item on the White House agenda — the extension of unemployment benefits and a payroll tax cut that will improve the lot of ordinary Americans.

In remarks following the negotiations, Mr. Obama said he “completely disagreed” with the Republican view that the tax cuts, including for the wealthiest, should be made permanent. “A permanent extension of these tax cuts would cost us $700 billion at a time when we need to start focusing on bringing down our deficit,” he said.

He, however, said he would not accept the “chilling prospect” faced by middle-class Americans of a tax rise on January 1, 2011, and unemployment insurance payouts drying up. “Make no mistake; allowing taxes to go up on all Americans would have raised taxes by $3,000 for a typical American family. And that could cost our economy well over a million jobs,” he said.

While the deal marks the breaking of a stalemate that could have spelt economic doom for millions of American households still reeling from the effects of the downturn, some experts noted that Mr. Obama has endangered the support of his liberal base.

Economist Paul Krugman recently argued against precisely such a deal, saying: “Mr. Obama should draw a line in the sand, right here, right now. If Republicans hold out, and taxes go up, he should tell the nation the truth, and denounce the blackmail attempt for what it is.”

Under the bipartisan deal, American families will retain not only the Bush-era tax cuts, but also those introduced under Mr. Obama.

Mr. Obama said that in exchange for a temporary extension of tax cuts for the wealthiest, middle-class tax credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit would persist, as would the American Opportunity Tax benefitting nearly eight million students.

The agreement will also see unemployment insurance extended for a further 13 months, a direct benefit to nearly three million Americans.

Labels: Bush-era, economic situation, tax cuts, U.S.

From The Hindu

“The biggest culprit” for rampant corruption in India, exemplified by recent cases such as the Commonwealth games scandal and the 2G-spectrum auction, is the Indian state, according to a leading think tank in Washington.

In a report the Heritage Foundation said that while long-standing issues such as tax evasion and corruption by the wealthy and by corporations still abound, it was the Indian government that was responsible for choking of growth by making it difficult for entrepreneurs to start businesses.

This fuelled the expansion of the black market, now said to be 40-50 per cent of India’s Gross Domestic Product, “in the neighbourhood of $600 billion.”

Pointing out that India ranked “an awful 165th out of 183 countries in the World Bank’s measure of the difficulty of starting a business,” the Heritage Foundation report said that many ordinary Indians balked at the thought of endless delays and high costs, preferring instead to proceed without the necessary authorisation and hiding their businesses from official scrutiny.

“This black market activity is due to a predatory state which seeks to control Indian entrepreneurship,” the report said, highlighting a recent headline that described how India had lost over $450 billion in illegal capital flows. This money was illegally earned and ideally would never have existed in the first place if the Indian federal government had not tried to restrict capital movement, the report said.

Touching upon some potential solutions the report’s author, Derek Scissors, said to The Hindu, “Capital account liberalisation can be technical but Reserve Bank of India should immediately commit to a schedule of capital account liberalisation to be implemented over the next three years, including limited amnesty.”

He added that the mere prospect of short-term liberalisation and some amnesty would lead to far more by way of declaration of capital flows. Further, just like the U.S., India would do well to cut its federal budget deficit, “not by a one-time telecom windfall as this year but as a long-term structural matter.” Dr. Scissors said to The Hindu that the “perceived ability to spend more money than you have leads inevitably to corruption.”

Citing the example of the Commonwealth games as illustrating the “government’s guilt” the report noted that they were plagued by overspending, due to lack of transparency and competition in state contract awards. State-run financials have also made loans in exchange for bribes, a problem which would be eased if the state did not dominate the banking system, the report added.

The report also discussed the recent telecom industry scandal, noting that there was “no telecom failure or betrayal here, quite the opposite,” that is, a failure and betrayal of federal coffers, with the “unwarranted cheapness of 2G spectrum (contributing) to a far more dynamic industry and thus led directly to the government’s windfall at this year’s 3G spectrum auction.”

When asked about the potential of policies such as the Universal ID Number and the Right to Information law to make a difference Dr. Scissors said, “Yes, these help at the micro level. It will be more difficult to violate the rights of individual citizens for the sake of graft and there should be more transparency, which always inhibits corruption”.

Overall, the Heritage Foundation report argued, “the answer is plain: deal a decisive blow against state interference in the economy.”

Labels: 2G spectrum case, Commonwealth Games scandal, corruption, India, political scandals, Right to Information Act, Universal ID Number

From The Hindu

The Unites States Treasury has announced that it will complete its exit from banking giant Citigroup this week, by offloading a final tranche of 2.4 billion common shares that it holds in the company. With the sale the final profit to the U.S. taxpayer is expected to be $12 billion.

As one of the largest recipients of bail-out money from the federal government, Citigroup accepted a total of $45 billion from the Treasury to shore up its beleaguered balance sheet during the worst of the financial crisis in 2008. Of that assistance, it repaid $20 billion and the balance of $25 billion was converted into common shares held by the Treasury.

Assuming the sale of the Treasury?s outstanding stake proceeds at $4.35 per share, as planned, the total proceeds for the taxpayer from the sale Citigroup stock will be close to $57 billion. The Treasury noted that it had already disposed of approximately 5.3 billion shares to date in at-the-market sales, of 7.7 billion shares that it had received in connection with Citigroup?s participation in the Capital Purchase Program.

?By selling all the remaining Citigroup shares today, we had an opportunity to lock in substantial profits for the taxpayer and avoid future risk,? said Tim Massad, Acting Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability.

Mr. Massad added that with the latest transaction, the Treasury would have advanced its goals of recovering funds from the Troubled Assets Relief Program, protecting the taxpayer, and ?getting the government out of the business of owning stakes in private companies.?

With the Treasury accelerating its exit from various investments made during the crisis, November witnessed a successful market offering by bailed-out auto major General Motors, which earned over $20 billion through the sale of its stock.

Labels: Citigroup stocks, U.S. Treasury

From The Hindu

Until the Mumbai terror attacks of November 2008, China, “at the behest of Pakistan,” blocked the United Nations Security Council from listing Jamaat-ud-Dawa, widely acknowledged as a front for the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, under the UNSC Resolution 1267. LeT has been held responsible for the Mumbai attacks.

The United States' frustration with China for impeding sanctions against JuD through the UN Committee on al-Qaeda- and Taliban-associated entities was made evident in a recent cable, classified as “Secret,” from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The cable also noted that while JuD chief Hafiz Muhammed Saeed served as the head of LeT too, the LeT's operational commander was Zaki ur-Rehman Lakvi, responsible for the group's military operations budget of approximately $5.2 million.

Issued to the U.S. embassies in Islamabad and elsewhere, the cable was dated August 10, 2009 and was published online by WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website, over the weekend.

Part of negotiation

China's actions on the UNSC prior to the Mumbai attacks were outlined as part of a broader process of negotiation in which the U.S. government sought to oppose a request by the JuD for “focal point de-listing,” under which a window of UN Secretariat could be approached by entities listed UNSC Resolution 1730 to petition for de-listing.

Commenting on the background of U.S. efforts to block the de-listing petition filed by lawyers representing JuD, the State Department cable noted that the UNSC Committee had added LeT to its Consolidated List in 2005, citing its affiliation with al-Qaeda.

The cable went on to note that while the addition of JuD and its leader, Muhammad Saeed, “followed closely on the heels of the LeT-perpetrated attacks in Mumbai,” the U.S.' request, preceding the attacks, “were placed on hold by China at the behest of Pakistan.”

The cable further indicated the U.S.' frustration with the pace of Pakistani efforts to curb the activities of JuD in the aftermath of its listing, contrary to numerous official comments in Washington at the time.

“Raise funds freely'

According to the cable, “In spite of Pakistani acquiescence to the listings in December 2008, we continue to see reporting indicating that JuD is still operating in multiple locations in Pakistan, and that the group continues to openly raise funds.”

The State Department added that it was unclear what steps, if any, the government of Pakistan has taken to freeze JuD assets or otherwise implement UN 1267 sanctions, which included an asset freeze, a travel ban, and an arms embargo. Defending its decision to oppose the JuD petition for de-listing, U.S. officials said in the cable that the intelligence community assessed that LeT used the JuD name as an alias and JuD “provides cover and protection for LeT's militant activities in Pakistan.”

Same entity

The cable further noted that LeT and JuD shared many senior leaders and both organisations stemmed from the same original entity, Markaz-ud-Dawawal-Irshad, founded around 1986.

Labels: cablegate, China, terrorism, U.S. secret cables, UN sanctions, Wikileaks

From The Hindu

A comprehensive inventory of what the United States considers “critical infrastructure and key resources,” has been published online by WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website, raising the pitch of the debate surrounding its exposé of secret U.S. State Department cables.

According to the cable, dated February 18 2009 and sent from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to all U.S. diplomatic outposts abroad, the State Department requested diplomats to update the “vital” sites list, which included telecommunication infrastructure, gas pipelines, mineral mines, medical research facilities, weapons components manufacturers and transportation hubs.

The sites mentioned in India include chromite mines in Orissa and Karnataka and a company called Generamedix in Gujurat, which the cable suggests is involved in producing chemotherapy agents, including florouracil and methotrexate.

Issuing a request for action to U.S. diplomatic posts world over the Secretary’s cable said the State Department required “compilation and annual update of a of critical infrastructure and key resources that are located outside U.S. borders and whose loss could critically impact the public health, economic security, and/or national and homeland security of the U.S.” The cable added that under the U.S. Patriot Act of 2001 “critical infrastructure” was defined as systems and assets, whether physical or virtual, “so vital to the U.S. [that] the incapacitation or destruction of such systems and assets would have a debilitating impact” on U.S. national security.

Condemnation of the release of the list followed swiftly, particularly in the United Kingdom, where a Downing Street spokesman was quoted as saying, “We unequivocally condemn the unauthorised release of classified information. The leaks and their publication are damaging to national security in the U.S., Britain and elsewhere.”

However Mark Stephens, the lawyer representing WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange, who is on the run from authorities, was said to have denied that Wikileaks was putting people and facilities at risk.

According to the BBC he said, “I do not think there is anything new in that... What I think is new is the fact that it has been published by Wikileaks and of course we have the Wikileaks factor because a number of governments have been embarrassed by what has happened.”

Labels: U.S. cables release, Wikileaks

From The Hindu

Lashkar-e-Taiba militants were planning “operations... involving a car,” against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, according to a recent secret diplomatic cable of the United States State Department released by WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website.

The cable, created on June 19 2009, was sent from the office of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to “Security Officer, Collective Priority,” and the U.S. embassies in Tripoli, Casablanca and Johannesburg. Some of the information in the cable had been redacted by WikiLeaks, yet it bore Ms. Clinton’s name at the end and was categorised as “Secret,” “No Foreign,” and it was “derived from multiple sources.”

Under the category of “key concerns,” the notes on LeT member Shafiq Khan, and alternatively a person identified only as “Hussein,” said that they continued operational planning on three tasks in early June of 2009.

These plans were associated with a “possible operation against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendar Modi, the establishment of a training camp, and unspecified work involving a car.”

The cable added that Hussein would coordinate his activities with an India-based colleague identified as Sameer.

Providing some geographic information for the operations, the cable further said that the Pakistan-based Shafiq Khafa had been seeking out information on possible training sites for the operations in the Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, and Kerala. It added that Khafa had an associate identified as “S.J.” with whom he was making these preparations in mid-June.

Quoting a “credible tearline,” or segment of an intelligence source, the cable went on to note that Khafa’s network was “striving to stand up two teams in southern India that rely on the support of LeT members based in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Nepal.”

However it cautioned that although specific details of planned LeT attacks remained unknown, intelligence obtained in late May of that year indicated that “Khafa’s cells were engaged in surveillance activities of potential targets, likely in southern India.”

Reports in May further suggested a Sri Lanka link, explaining that the establishment of a facilitation team in that country might then lead to Kerala or Tamil Nadu being used as a base of operations.

“The estimated time of completion for setting up the facilitation route and camps to be two to three months,” the cable said.

Labels: cablegate, Gujarat Chief Minister, LeT, Narendra Modi, terrorism, U.S. secret cables, Wikileaks

From The Hindu

The United States’ support for India’s candidacy for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council is consistent with U.S. interest in seeing India sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) according to a State Department spokesman.

In response to a question on how the U.S. could reconcile its position on India signing the NPT with its support for India’s UNSC seat, Philip Crowley, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, said, “We do not see those (goals) as being at odds.”

When asked whether India’s candidacy should be looked at equally with countries such as Japan, which has forsworn nuclear weapons entirely, or South Africa, which has given up nuclear weapons, Mr. Crowley said that India had shown itself to be a “responsible global stakeholder”.

He added that President Barack Obama had announced the U.S. position on the matter during his recent visit to the country, however emphasising that U.S. support for India on this issue was “not exclusive of our support for other countries” as well.

On the questions of non-proliferation and disarmament, Mr. Crowley reiterated that there had been no change in the U.S. position. “President Obama’s April 2009 speech in Prague envisioned a world without nuclear weapons,” he said, and given that the U.S. and India shared this vision, the two countries would continue to work together toward that goal.

“There is absolutely no contradiction between that recognition and U.S. commitment to the NPT,” Mr. Crowley noted, adding also that the U.S. was supportive of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty as well, even if India had reached an agreement with the Nuclear Suppliers Group for the transfer of civilian nuclear technology.

In the context of non-proliferation treaties, Mr. Crowley also pointed out that the State Department had been encouraging Pakistan to sign on to the Fissile Material Cut-off regime.

Labels: nuclear weapons, United Nations Security Council, United States-India relations

From The Hindu

United States President Barack Obama has landed in Afghanistan, the White House announced on Friday.

The trip, which was not announced prior to this date possibly owing to security concerns, will include meetings with U.S. troops in which the President will extend his thanks for their efforts in the country.

While Mr. Obama will stay at the Bagram Air Base, Afghan President Hamid Karzai will remain in Kabul “due to bad weather.” However, he and Mr. Obama will hold a secure video teleconference, the White House confirmed

Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Benjamin Rhodes said planning for the trip began a month ago and the principal reason for going was to spend time with the U.S. troops during the holiday season, to thank them and to wish them happy holidays.

On the question of whether the WikiLeaks revelations had resulted in even more “headaches” for Mr. Obama on this visit, Mr. Rhodes said there had been public discussions of challenges in Afghanistan before, and this is not new.

The Obama administration had “weathered those kinds of revelations before as it relates to President Karzai and the Afghan government,” he was reported to have said, adding, “We are all aware there are serious challenges in Afghanistan.”

Labels: Barack Obama

From The Hindu

The U.S. economy's unemployment rate climbed to 9.8 per cent in November, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics (BLS) monthly report, made available on Friday. It was hovering at 9.6 per cent in each of the prior three months, the BLS cautioned.

In a development that is almost certain to increase pressure on the Obama administration to intensify its job-creation efforts, the BLS also noted that nonfarm payroll employment barely changed, adding a mere 39,000 jobs. This marks the worst month for the U.S. job market, since September.

Worryingly one of the main sectors that added jobs was temporary help services — reflecting a shortfall in permanent job creation. The only other sector to add significantly to the jobs total was healthcare. Employment in retail trade, however, fell and in most major industries it changed little over the month.

Reflecting continuing weakness in job markets across sectors, the BLS data suggested that the number of job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs rose by 390,000 to 9.5 million in November.

The number of people who were looking for permanent jobs but not finding them remained more or less unchanged at 9 million.

Many of the workers in this category were employed part time for economic reasons, that is, because their hours had been cut-back or because they were unable to find a full-time job, the BLS said.

The numbers of those who were not in the labour force but wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months, rose from 2.3 million a year earlier. The November joblessness figures did not include such individuals as they had not searched for work in the four weeks preceding the survey.

In the professional and business services sectors, employment in temporary help services continued to increase in November, with 40,000 jobs added, the BLS report said.

It also noted that employment in mining continued to trend up over the month and support activities for mining added 6,000 jobs in November.

Labels: Bureau of Labour Statistics, unemployment, United States

From The Hindu

The reintegration of Taliban fighters into any formal governing structure in Afghanistan “is not a political negotiation designed to give Taliban elements a share of power,” Richard Holbrooke, United States Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, assured Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao.

At a meeting on January 18, 2010, revealed in a private State Department cable published by the WikiLeaks whistleblower website, Ms. Rao was said to have raised “grave concerns about Taliban reintegration plans currently under discussion.”

She and other Indian colleagues had at the time argued that no amount of monetary incentives would induce the Taliban to alter its core beliefs of intolerance and militancy, and expressed scepticism that the British plan for Afghanistan would work unless Pakistan changed its policy on supporting the Quetta Shura and other Taliban elements.

However, Mr. Holbrooke reassured Ms. Rao that the U.S. would not be a party to any such arrangement given, first, the Taliban's links to the Al-Qaeda and, secondly, the social programmes of the Taliban, which were “unpalatable.”

He sought to persuade Ms. Rao that India's concerns on any changes to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1267 were unwarranted, in particular concerns that the policy on terrorism sanctions might be altered with respect to Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders such as Mullah Omar, Gulubuddin Hekmatyar, and Hafiz Saeed.

As per the cable, Ms. Rao also brought escalating violence in Kashmir into the conversation, and expressed concern that there had been a “sharp increase in unseasonal Pakistan-inspired violence and preparation for violence.”

Touching on the issues of cross-border shelling along the Line of Control and in Punjab, increased infiltration, and the transfer of terrorist hardware, Ms. Rao said to Mr. Holbrooke: “They are clearly trying to stir the pot in Kashmir.”

When she then informed him that India had not turned its back to Pakistan but needed to see some Pakistani progress on terrorism before it could reengage in discussions, Mr. Holbrooke said he understood “clearly where the U.S. strategic interests lie,” and shared details with Ms. Rao on the evolving political landscape in Pakistan “with a weakening President Zardari and the fluid dynamic between the various centres of power, including COAS Kayani, Prime Minister Gilani, PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif, and Chief Justice Choudhary.”

Labels: cablegate, India-U.S. ties, U.S. Embassy cables, Wikileaks, WikiLeaks Afghanistan, WikiLeaks India

From The Hindu

In the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attacks of November 2008, European and other diplomatic missions in New Delhi deliberately chose to offer India a sympathetic message “rather than pound on the government for its massive intelligence failure,” according to a cable of the United States State Department released recently by the WikiLeaks.

In the cable, which was dated December 2, 2008 and written by the U.S. embassy in New Delhi to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. officials reported that the Australian, British, Canadian, and New Zealand High Commissions had conveyed their intent to adopt this “controlled approach” in their reactions to the attacks.

However, they were equally clear that any offers of assistance ought to be made with care, so as to avoid being interpreted by India as politically motivated or attempts to monitor its actions, and there was a need to take extra care not to get “sucked into the blame game Pakistan and India are currently playing.”

Regarding the investigations into the attacks, the U.S. embassy termed a “Million Dollar Question” the issue whether the ISI was behind 26/11.

On this, the British High Commission officials said that while there were clear links between the perpetrators and the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, and also links between the LeT and the ISI, there was “no clear evidence yet to suggest that the ISI directed or facilitated the attacks.”

A contact within the British High Commission in New Delhi also informed the American diplomats that India's move to place high-profile criminal figures, such as Dawood Ibrahim and Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Maulana Azhar, on the Most-Wanted List submitted to Islamabad “took away from the focus on LeT members implicated in the Mumbai attacks.”

In the same cable, the U.S. officials also recorded that a Pakistani diplomat in New Delhi informed them that President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan had to “backpedal on [his] initial offer, made before the Mumbai attacks, to send [the] ISI Chief to India,” after misrepresentations of the move in the Indian press fuelled the “deterioration in the Indo-Pak relationship.”

Labels: cablegate, mumbai terror, U.S. Embassy cables, Wikileaks