U.S. consulate for sale, in India’s daily paper
For sale: a spacious, well-built Mumbai townhouse with beautiful views, well-heeled neighbours and one considerate, well-respected former owner.
Lodged between an advert for hair loss treatment and an article on illicit after-hours drinking in India’s commercial hub, the U.S. government consulate in Mumbai invited bids for its two consulate properties in Tuesday’s Times of India newspaper.
The consulate building, located at a much sought-after address in the exclusive Breach Candy neighbourhood in the south of the city, has long been outgrown by its inhabitants, who already have a new location in Mumbai’s northern business district.
But a buyer has been elusive. Enter the world’s most-read English language daily.
“For sale,” read the red text of the advert on page 5 of the newspaper, “The American Consulate Properties”.
Three bids valuing the consulate at 8 billion rupees ($169 million) were made by developers on Tuesday for the 8,345 sq metre (90,000 sq ft) plot, ET Now news channel reported citing sources.
The agent, DTZ, could not confirm the bids, but said that all offers would be considered. Real estate consultants not involved with the sale told Reuters that the reported price tag met their expectations.
Mistrust, Afghan insecurity loom over Indo-Pak talks
By Annie Banerji
As India and Pakistan begin diplomatic talks between the two countries’ foreign secretaries, Pew Research Centre published a survey this week that shows Pakistanis are strongly critical of India and the United States as well.
Even though there has been a slew of attacks by the Taliban on Pakistani targets since Osama bin Laden’s killing in May, the Pew Research publication illustrates that three in four Pakistanis find India a greater threat than extremist groups.
In similar fashion, 65 percent of Indians expressed an unfavourable view of Pakistan, seeing it as a bigger threat than the LeT, an active militant Islamic organisation operating mainly from Pakistan and Maoist militants operating in India.
Moreover, a majority of Pakistanis disapproved of the U.S. military operation that killed Osama bin Laden in his Abbottabad compound, located 35 miles from Islamabad. Only 12 percent expressed a positive view of the U.S. and most Pakistanis view the U.S. as an enemy, consider it a potential military threat and oppose American-led anti-terrorism efforts.
In the midst of these unflattering opinions that India and Pakistan share of each other, U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision to withdraw 33,000 troops from Afghanistan by next summer comes to the foreground as Washington’s expectation is to see India and Pakistan jointly fill its shoes. However, India feels it will be left to babysit a dangerous neighbourhood riddled with militancy.
Though both countries wish to have improved relations, Pakistan worries about India’s influence in Afghanistan as it would have to defend both its eastern and western borders from what it sees as its existential threat. In the same way, New Delhi fears the possibility of its nuclear-armed neighbour and the Taliban filling the vacuum left by the U.S. troops.
The show must go on; the majority of Indians and Pakistanis do not want peace, but a continued war with each other, until the other party has been annihilated. This is their destiny and many of the leaders who went into dialogues to talk about talks and negotiations about the disputes ended the talks by adding new issues to the main conflict of Kashmir. The leaders of both countries have been the masters of deceit, duplicity and betrayal outwitting even the spin master of Politics, the famous Machiavelli. They have never tried sincerely to protect people’s interests or those of the coming generations, inspite of their supposed commitment to fairness and justice for their people.In the meantime they have acquired enough lethal weapons to annihilate each other, the genuine desire of both parties.
Rex Minor
Is India really the world’s fifth most powerful country?
India is the world’s fifth most powerful country, according to a New Delhi-authored national security document, the Times of India reported on Wednesday, as Indian analysts placed the emerging nation above major European powers.
Outranking traditional global powers such as the UK, France and Germany, India’s ballooning population, defense capabilities and economic clout were cited as reasons for its position behind only the U.S., China, Japan and Russia in India’s National Security Annual Review 2010, which will be officially released by the country’s foreign ministry next week.
Its statistical foundations in terms of population numbers and GDP aside — in terms of purchasing power parity, it should be noted — India’s experience of wielding power on the global stage of late, boosted by its temporary seat on the United Nations Security Council, has been less encouraging.
India has failed to cultivate a wholly reciprocal relationship with the United States, despite warm rhetoric in recent years between New Delhi and Washington and a number of big-ticket diplomatic and industrial agreements.
New Delhi appears to struggle to assert itself in the face of growing Chinese influence in south Asia, has dithered on formulating a firm approach to states such as Iran, and risked appearing naive and out of its depth during the lead-up to international efforts to protect civilians in Libya.
Indeed, an apparent united front from Beijing, Moscow and New Delhi, representing three of the top five most powerful nations according to the report, against the no-fly zone in the North African country has had no discernible effect on the ongoing military action against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.
Furthermore, India still appears more concerned and engaged with, and distracted by, its long-standing rival Pakistan than wider geopolitical issues.
Libya? We have three countries meddling in a ex colony of another European great power (Italy) in the name of humanity and all we are doing is creating a bigger unresolved mess.
from Afghan Journal:
Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, a deterrent against India, but also United States ?
Pakistan's nuclear weapons have been conceived and developed as a deterrent against mighty neighbour India, more so now when its traditional rival has added economic heft to its military muscle. But Islamabad may also be holding onto its nuclear arsenal to deter an even more powerful challenge, which to its mind, comes from the United States, according to Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who led President Barack Obama's 2009 policy review on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Pakistan and the United States are allies in the war against militancy, but ties have been so troubled in recent years that some in Pakistan believe that the risk of a conflict cannot be dismissed altogether and that the bomb may well be the country's only hedge against an America that looks less a friend and more a hostile power.
Last year the Obama administration said there could be consequences if the next attack in the West were to be traced backed to Pakistan, probably the North Waziristan hub of al Qaeda, the Taliban and other militant groups.No nation can ignore a warning as chilling as that, and it is reasonable to expect the Pakistan military to do what it can to defend itself.
Riedel in a piece in The Wall Street Journal says Pakistan's army chief Ashfaq Kayani may well have concluded that the only way to hold off a possible American military action is the presence of nuclear weapons on its soil and hence the frenetic race to increase the size of the arsenal to the point that Pakistan is on track to become the fourth largest nuclear power after the United States, Russia and China.
Last month's military action in Libya, the third Muslim nation attacked by the United States in the ten years since 9/11, can only heighten anxieties in Pakistan. Indeed Libya holds an opposite lesson for Pakistan's security planners. This is a country that gave up a nuclear weapons programme - ironically assisted by Pakistan's disgraced nuclear scientist A.Q.Khan - under a deal with the West following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Suppose for a moment that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi had held on its nuclear weapons, would there have been air strikes then ?
Indeed none of the three countries attacked by the United States had nuclear weapons including, as it turned out, Iraq although the whole idea of invading it was to eliminate the weapons of mass destruction. You could further argue that this perhaps is the one reason why the United States hasn't taken on North Korea because of its advanced nuclear programme with a bomb or two in the basement.
An Islamic fundamentalist anti-India/anti-West nation with hundreds of nukes. A true nightmare. The US must do something before its too late.
With friends like these … WikiLeaks underlines fragile US-India ties
For all the talk of India’s increasingly strong partnership with the United States, what the latest WikiLeaks documents published in The Hindu show are far slower, foot-dragging ties with a suspicious Delhi in one corner and a frustrated Washington in the other struggling to find common ground and trust.
The really worrying thing is that these reports come with a time lag of at least a year, before corruption scandals and policy stagnation effectively paralysed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government. Despite U.S. President Barack Obama’s gushing words for an “emerged” India last year, one wonders if now the level of U.S. complaints have reached a crescendo.
The WikiLeaks reports published have so far sparked one political bombshell – the cash for votes scandal as the ruling Congress party pushed through a 2008 confidence vote. But other reports on Monday highlight more mundane, but deep-seated irritants.
One senior U.S. diplomat talked of “Brezhnev-era controls”. Former U.S. ambassador David Mulford noted how much easier it was to do business under the former BJP-led coalition and complained of problems that were “multiplying and festering.”
“We note that under the NDA government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee it was easier to meet Indian officials and get business done, even in the paranoid Ministry of Home Affairs, but the Congress government has reverted to type, indulging in the sorts of Brezhnev-era controls on its people of which Indira Gandhi would have approved. The Nehru dynasty needs to become more like the Tata dynasty,” Mulford is quoted by WikiLeaks as saying in one secret cable.
The one man who seems to come off well from the reports is Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, whom U.S. diplomats saw as the go-to man in the administration, with his power second only to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Family scion Rahul Gandhi is dismissed as a lacklustre leader.
The impact of Wikileaks on current affairs and politics in India, as well as US/Indian relations is very pronounced. The current debates and conflict in India are extremely interesting to follow for those of us at wikileaks-movie.com and we are paying close attention to the national partnership struck between Wikileaks and The Hindu. We’ll see what continues to unfold. Hopefully the truth regarding bribery and corruption by leading politicians will be proven without a doubt. Moreover it is astonishing to watch some of the Wikileaks related debates and presentations by politicians on You Tube. The fist pounding is fierce! The political parties and leaders in the great country of India sure know how to go at each other!
Wikileaks cash for votes allegations implicate India’s Congress
India’s ruling Congress party offered cash for votes to pass a crucial 2008 confidence vote in parliament, a secret U.S. state cable released on Thursday said, embroiling Manmohan Singh’s beleaguered government in yet another corruption scandal that risks further opposition attacks on the graft-smeared coalition.
The secret U.S. state department cable obtained by WikiLeaks and published by The Hindu newspaper on Thursday details a conversation between a senior Congress party member and a U.S. Embassy official surrounding the payment of almost $9 million by a government facing a crucial confidence vote to members of a regional political party to secure their support.
While the cable could not be independently verified by Reuters, its contents threaten to expose illegal practices that many fear are part and parcel of Indian politics.
Leader of the Opposition Sushma Swaraj, who has in recent months led a scathing attack on the Congress party-led coalition government for failing to tackle corruption in India, posted on Twitter: “The wikileaks details in today’s Hindu about payoffs to MPs are shocking. I will raise this issue in Parliament today.”
Both houses of parliament were adjourned after 30 minutes on Thursday after uproar over the cable’s contents.
The cable details a conversation between an aide of Satish Sharma, Congress party MP and close associate of party chief Sonia Gandhi, and U.S. Charge d’Affaires Steven White in which the aide states that four MPs belonging to the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) party had been paid 100 million rupees ($2.2 million) each in order to secure their support for the government in a tight confidence vote over the Congress party’s support of a nuclear deal between India and the U.S.
White, who authored the secret cable, described how Embassy staff were shown two chests containing 500-600 million rupees ($11-13 million) that had been earmarked for “use as pay-offs”.
Wikileaks, increasingly through partnerships with national newspapers such as The Hindu, is impacting government in many ways. What strikes us at Wikileaks-Movie.com is that the Wikileaks revelations, despite the challenge of independent verification, are forcing politicians, diplomats and the governments they serve through a process of self-examination and improvement in practices. The emerging disputes and conflagrations may be like an unhealthy forest which has had fire suppressed for too long and then, for a time, burns out of control until a balance can be restored.
U.S. questions India’s military response abilities
WikiLeaks’ secret U.S. cable dump exposed the first controversial remarks about India on Wednesday, when a cable published by the Guardian described American belittling of India’s ‘Cold Start’ military retaliation plan against Pakistan. The Cold Start is a much vaunted doctrine to rebuff any Pakistani aggression by a massive military attack across the border within 72 hours of any attack from its neighbour.
After India and the U.S. were spared any serious embarrassment in the first two days of WikiLeak’s staggered release of secret U.S. cables, save an outspoken remark from Hillary Clinton about India’s inflated global ambitions, the secret cable from U.S. Ambassador Tim Roemer states that it is unlikely that India would ever enact the planned retribution strategy, and the chances of success would be questionable if so, in a cutting critique of New Delhi’s military might.
The February 16, 2010 cable from the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, classified by Roemer and released by WikiLeaks, describes India’s ‘Cold Start Doctrine’ as “a mixture of myth and reality.”
“The GOI (Government of India) refrained from implementing Cold Start even after an attack as audacious and bloody as the Mumbai attack, which calls into serious question the GOI’s willingness to actually adopt the Cold Start option,” Roemer states.
But in perhaps the most damning of remarks regarding its effectiveness, even purely as a deterrent, Roemer states that Pakistan appears to be unfazed by Cold Start’s potential application:
“The Pakistanis have known about Cold Start since 2004, but this knowledge does not seem to have prompted them to prevent terror attacks against India to extent such attacks could be controlled. This fact calls into question Cold Start’s ability to deter Pakistani mischief inside India. Even more so, it calls into question the degree of sincerity of fear over Cold Start as expressed by Pakistani military leaders to USG (United States Government) officials.”
New Delhi has said it was already warned by the U.S. about possible leaks, and has restated its close relationship with Washington.
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
Wikileaks on Pakistan
In the State Department cables released by Wikileaks and so far reported, the most eye-catching as far as Pakistan is concerned is a row with Washington over nuclear fuel.
According to the New York Times, the cables show:
"A dangerous standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel: Since 2007, the United States has mounted a highly secret effort, so far unsuccessful, to remove from a Pakistani research reactor highly enriched uranium that American officials fear could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device. In May 2009, Ambassador Anne W. Patterson reported that Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts because, as a Pakistani official said, “if the local media got word of the fuel removal, ‘they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan’s nuclear weapons,’ he argued.”
The Pakistan Army is deeply sensitive about any questions on the safety of its nuclear weapons. The country is also often awash with conspiracy theories accusing the Americans of harbouring secret plans to dismantle the nuclear weapons.
That said, the row reported by the NYT appeared to have been about HEU at a nuclear research reactor rather than the weapons themselves, so it may turn out to be less dramatic than it appears. Pakistan's nuclear weapons are considered to be well-guarded although analysts have cited a risk of militants trying to seize nuclear material which they might use to make a dirty bomb. (For a factbox on Pakistan's nuclear weapons, see here).
Of potentially huge significance for Pakistan are cables, reported in The Guardian, saying that Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has repeatedly urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear programme.
"The Saudi king was recorded as having 'frequently exhorted the US to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons programme', one cable stated. 'He told you [Americans] to cut off the head of the snake,' the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir said, according to a report on Abdullah's meeting with the US general David Petraeus in April 2008." The Guardian reported.
@Sumaira
And pray, may I ask who the so called ‘undercover’ terrorist organisations are that operate in the country?
Rex Minor
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
Between the lines: Obama’s comments on Kashmir
President Barack Obama's words on relations with Pakistan were always going to be carefully scripted during his visit to India, where even to say the word "Kashmir" aloud in public can raise jitters about U.S. interference in what New Delhi sees as a bilateral dispute.
So first up, here's what he had to say during a news conference in New Delhi with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in response to a question about what role the United States could play in resolving the Kashmir dispute (NDTV has the video).
"With respect to Kashmir, obviously this is a long-standing dispute between India and Pakistan; as I said yesterday, I believe that both Pakistan and India have an interest in reducing tensions between the two countries. The United States cannot impose a solution to these problems but I have indicated to Prime Minister Singh that we are happy to play any role that the parties think is appropriate in reducing these tensions. That's in the interests of the region; it is in the interests of the two countries involved and it is in the interests of the United States of America.
"So my hope is that conversations will be taking place between the two countries; they may not start on that particular flashpoint; there may be confidence building measures that need to take place, but I am absolutely convinced that it is both in India's and Pakistan's interest to reduce tensions and that will enable them I think to focus on the range of both challenges and opportunities that each country faces."
"I do want to make this point though, that I think Prime Minister Singh throughout his career and throughout his prime ministership has consistently spoken out both publicly and privately on his desire, his personal commitment to reduce tensions between India and Pakistan and for that I very much commend him. I think Prime Minister Singh is sincere and relentless in his desire for peace. And so my hope is that both sides can, over the next several months, several years, find mechanisms that are appropriate for them to work out what are these very difficult issues."
A quick reading between the lines suggests that he is unfraid of referring to Kashmir in public and keeping it on the agenda, while also acknowledging that resolving the dispute may take years rather than months, and that the two countries might need to build confidence by agreeing on other issues first. He also steered a middle course between Pakistan's insistence that Kashmir is the core issue, and India's demand that "cross-border terrorism" must end before it will agree to talk.
Obama has moved quite some distance since his 2008 election campaign, when he raised hackles in India by suggesting a resolution of the Kashmir dispute could help in the war in Afghanistan by convincing Pakistan to focus on tackling militants holed up on its border rather than its traditional enemy.
Rex
I do not expect anything concrete from you. So don’t sweat.
Have fun!
from Afghan Journal:
Pakistan’s Zardari in China; nuclear deal in grasp
(File picture of President Zardari in China)
Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari is in China this week, making good his promise to visit the "all weather ally" every three months. During his previous trips, his hosts have sent him off to the provinces to see for himself the booming growth there, but this trip may turn out be a lot more productive.
Zardari may well return with a firm plan by China to build two reactors at Pakistan's Chashma nuclear plant, as my colleague in Beijing reports in this article, overriding concern in Washington, New Delhi and other capitals that this undermined global non-proliferation objectives.
It's a bit of a nuclear poker going on in the region and Afghanistan as the new battleground between the regional players cannot remain untouched.
The proposed Chinese nuclear transfer to Pakistan follows a groundbreaking deal that the United States and India sealed two years ago which allows New Delhi to access U.S. nuclear technology and fuel while retaining the right to pursue a military programme. It was a deal that raised eyebrows all around, overturning decades of U.S-led efforts to wear down India's resistance to nuclear disarmament pacts through a combination of tough technology sanctions and offers of a a strategic relationship designed to appeal to New Delhi's global aspirations.
In the event, Washington which invaded Iraq on the grounds that it was developing nuclear weapons, and has tightened the squeeze on Iran for its nuclear activities, virtually gave New Delhi pretty much what it has coveted all along. The right to pursue a weapons programme as well as complete access to international nuclear technology to boost civilian nuclear power for an energy-starved nation. It was as if the Pope had thrown the Bible away when it came to India, as an Indian diplomat long used to haranguing by U.S. officials over the country's nuclear programmes told me back then.
Somehow the USA appears to be always in the lime light of any developments around the world. Is it because they have a “grand bouge”? Look east the wise man of today’s says. while I write the German chancelor is in China make joint priograms on high tech. China now has the fastest passsenger trains in the world, the German technology which even the German Govt. found it uneconomical to have it in germany. The USA seems to boast about the slowest passenger train in an industrial country. Have they not done enough to use the taiwan bogey with China? Why should anyone have problems with the peaceful nuclear energy? The Indian politicians should not be jealous of Pakistan peaceful activities. In fact I would recommend that India and Pakistan could also enter into high tech joint projects? Is this not the way to create trust and peace between these two nations, or are they going to keep on bickering about the territory and disregard the people, which is the wealth of the two nations?
Rex Minor
The political title Consul is used for the official representatives of the government of one state in the territory of another, normally acting to assist and protect the citizens of the consul’s own country, and to facilitate trade and friendship between the peoples of the two countries. A consul is distinguished from an ambassador, the latter being a representative from one head of state to another. Thanks.
Regards,
Chandler Real Estate