Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee’s decision to go to Syria — as well as to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan — from March 28 reflects the great divide within the Indian establishment over the looming war on Iraq. The Foreign Office can explain it any way it likes, including the fact that there has been no bilateral trip to Damascus since Rajiv Gandhi, but the truth is that Syria, Washington’s biggest critic in the Middle East, had led the anti-US naysayers in the Security Council even before France made it fashionable to be pro-peace. At one level, Vajpayee has stuck his neck out in favour of Buddha’s Middle Path — which on Iraq means trying to avert a war as long as possible and going with the UN when it’s not possible. Travelling to Damascus at the height of the crisis certainly indicates Vajpayee’s own aversion to the US-led conflict. It also sends the message that India, despite its persistent flirtation with Israel, would like to be counted with its traditional Arab allies on the Palestinian question.Washington’s inability to carry the world with it has of course accentuated India’s dilemma. Interestingly, a powerful section of the bureaucracy seems to be pushing for a more ‘‘pragmatic’’ position (read, more pro-US) on Iraq, arguing that it was none other than Bush who forced Pakistan last year to commit to ending cross-border terrorism. But with Musharraf having tied up the US government in knots, New Delhi’s now wondering what happened to those promises. US targets Pak with ‘whip vote’ on IraqThe most powerful woman on earth, Condoleezza Rice, has no qualms about using both body language and words to get the rest of the Security Council to fall in line on Iraq. So a few days before the FBI, along with Pakistani intelligence, arrested Khalid Mohammed Sheikh, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Christina Rocca was sent to Islamabad. Her mission: to get Musharraf to say ‘‘yes’’ at the UN, if and when a second UN resolution is voted on the Iraq question. The Khalid Sheikh arrest was a reminder to Musharraf that Washington really knew what the score was on the ISI’s continuing connivance in the regrouping of the Taliban-Al Qaeda. Asked if the US had its required nine votes on the Security Council, Rice did not mince words. We haven’t called for a ‘‘whip vote’’ yet, she said, indicating that the US was certainly not going to cringe in front of nations like Guinea, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan. The ‘‘swinging six’’, as these non-permanent nations are being called, implied Rice, better know what’s good for them. Or else.Keeping alive old ties with MyanmarHmmm, looks like the MEA can go both West and the East at the same time. New Delhi is sending Vice-President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat to Myanmar, around the time the PM flies off to Syria, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan. Shekhawat’s high-profile trip from April 1-4 symbolises New Delhi’s abiding interest in its eastern neighbour and adds to the heap of high-profile visits being undertaken by both sides. Myanmar’s strategic location, at the crossroads of Indo-China as well as astride the Bay of Bengal-Malacca Straits, makes this an important relationship.Shekhawat will probably go to Mandalay, the home of the famed Glass Palace and the gracious old capital of the Burmese kings. Here is where history, barely a hundred years ago in 1885, threw in a twister. The last king of Burma was exiled by the British to Ratnagiri in Maharashtra, while India’s last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar was exiled to Rangoon after the failed revolt of 1857. US democracy only for Iraq, not SaudiAll those glued to the TV screens listening to Bush announce last week that regime change in Iraq would constitute the first blow for democracy in the region, would have done well to read other fine print in the US media. At the exact same time, the Washington Post reported, US diplomats in Riyadh were assuring the Saudi government that Washington had no intention of exporting the post-war ‘‘Iraqi model’’ of democracy into Saudi Arabia. Clearly, the House of Al-Saud had been rocked by a National Reform Document signed by some 100 Saudis in January, demanding greater political reform and an elected lower house of Parliament to start with. An Internet site (www.tuvaa.com), which was inundated with similar signatures was soon closed down by the Saudi government. Significantly, those that signed on the dotted line of the reform document were hardly pro-West Saudi liberals, but radical Islamists and theologians. These Saudi liberals now fear that after the war, the monarchy may well gang up with Washington to perpetuate its own monopoly on its people — all in the name of keeping extreme-right wing radicals out of the political space.
